


HURRY UP NOW IT'S

by seizethejongdae



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Explicit Language, Fear of Heights, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8101768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seizethejongdae/pseuds/seizethejongdae
Summary: Sehun thought that stowing upon an airship to escape his life problems would be a fantastic idea. Too bad air pirates attack literally every other day of the week, the lower deck has endless, mysterious rooms that could kill him, and the enigmatic engineer is hotter than all of the ship’s furnaces combined. Yeah. Too bad.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in the 2016 Round 4 of Chenpionships

“What are you looking at?” a voice cautiously asked, further waking up Sehun from his slumber that an earlier scream loudly disrupted.  
  
Sehun shut his eyes even tighter, trying to fall back asleep…asleep…asl—  
  
“Luhan…is that a dead _body_? How did it even get here? What if we get arrested for murder? How much time would we spend in prison? If we don’t get executed?” another voice worriedly asked.  
  
Sehun sighed as he listened to the voices argue. It was too late to fall back asleep now, and so he blinked, adjusting to the little bright beam of yellow light peeking in from the cracks of the door that illuminated some of the darkness he had previously been plunged in. Sleeping in a cupboard was perhaps not one of his best ideas, as he had uncomfortably squeezed and bent his long limbs into the tight space in order to fit. But when he chose to stow away on this airship, anything except a hole in the floor was honestly fine.  
  
“Listen…Just show me. What did you find?” the other person exasperatedly asked.  
  
“On the count of three…open the doors with me, okay?” the other voice timidly asked.  
  
_Wait._  
  
One.  
  
_What?_  
  
Two.  
  
_Oh._  
  
Three.  
  
_Fuck._  
  
“Hey,” Sehun said as most charmingly as he could even though his limbs were splayed in perhaps the most unflattering manner possible. If he was already going to be caught so quickly, only after two days of hiding aboard this airship, then he might as well present himself as friendly as possible so the ship’s crew might let him stay a little longer.  
  
There was no way he could or would go back now.  
  
“See, Jongin? He’s alive. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just a stowaway,” a young man said.  
  
“Oh. I guess you’re right, Luhan,” Jongin said to the other man, his gaze curiously wandering over Sehun, “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I was…trying to sleep?” Sehun offered.  
  
“We should take him to Yifan. He’ll know what to do,” Luhan sighed, reaching a hand out to Sehun to help him out of the cupboard. Sehun tried to use Luhan’s weight to pull himself out, but it was going to take more than a hand to remove him from the cramped cupboard after smushing his body into such a tiny space.  
  
“Can we let him stay,” Jongin amusedly asked as he bent down to gently pry Sehun’s legs out of the cupboard.  
  
“I _said_ let’s take him to Yifan first. We don’t know if he’s dangerous,” Luhan said, immediately patting Sehun down for any weapons, but only finding a wrinkled ticket stub.  
  
“I’m Jongin. This is Luhan. Who are you?” Jongin asked curiously.  
  
“Sleepy. Stowaway. Sehun,” Sehun said after suppressing a yawn.  
  
“What type of parents would name their kid that?” Jongin teasingly asked.  
  
“Dead ones,” Sehun bluntly said.  
  
“Oh. Sorry,” Jongin quietly said, but Sehun merely shrugged. His parents were long gone…had been gone so much time ago, and it wasn’t as if he actually remembered anything much at all about them. Sometimes if he thought hard enough, he could vaguely recall a booming chuckle, rosy cheeks, and warmth. Love.  
  
But other times he wondered if he was just making up the things he wanted.  
  
Jongin remained silent after that, not wishing to bring up anymore negative memories, and Luhan refused to break the silence, so Sehun simply observed the different parts of the ship the two of them lead him past on his way to whoever Yifan was. When Sehun first stowed away here, he didn’t have much time to look around and take a leisurely stroll to explore the ship and its rooms because he was just focused on surviving and hiding and making sure no one found him.  
  
But now, he could begin to appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the airship. The beautiful glass windows of the upper rooms that Luhan and Jongin lead him past offered a spectacular, shining view of the horizon before them, and steam lightly snaked around the rooms while the golden pipes twisted around the ceilings as the ship slowly sailed across the sky.  
  
And when they burst through the top deck doors, sunlight dancing upon his skin and warming him up, Sehun stopped in his tracks for a second to take in the sheer magnitude and overwhelming beauty of the vast, expansive sky that opened up right in front of him.  
  
“Let’s go…Hurry up,” Luhan said, pushing Sehun along as he refused to look at anywhere but the ground.  
  
Finally they lead him across the other side of the top deck and into a little room cluttered with a multitude of odd things. The room was bursting, cramped with little trinkets, as if someone’s diary had spilled out and splashed its contents upon the walls. But instead of words, objects of various sizes decorated the space. A vase full of fresh, yellow daffodils rested on the center of the mahogany desk while paintings with gilded frames covered every inch of the bright walls, so Sehun almost didn’t notice the tall person painting near the side of the room in the midst of everything around him.  
  
“Yifan, we have someone for you,” Luhan said, knocking on the open door before entering and pushing Sehun inside.  
  
“If it’s my grandmother please tell her I’ll be home in like…ten years,” Yifan nonchalantly said with his back turned to them still.  
  
“We have…Sleepy. Stowaway. Sehun,” Jongin said as Luhan pushed Sehun to the front to meet Yifan.  
  
Yifan put down his paintbrush and palette carefully and turned around to look at Sehun. He introduced himself politely, wiping his hand with a towel to rid it of the extra paint before shaking hands with Sehun, who suddenly felt a little small in Yifan’s large presence and under the gaze of his intimidatingly pointed eyebrows.  
  
“You're the captain?” Sehun mumbled.  
  
“Yeah, although _someone_ on this ship might argue that since he’s the one that keeps this airship in the sky, he’s the most important,” Yifan said.  
  
Sehun’s main objective was to stay on this ship, so he didn’t dare ask who…who would argue that?  
  
Who?  
  
But his silence prompted Yifan to awkwardly shift around and ask him more questions.  
  
“So…why are you here?” He asked curiously, “It would’ve been easier to sneak onto a bigger airship, you know?”  
  
“I’m…Well. I wasn’t exactly very picky with which ship I chose, but your crew found me obviously, so maybe I should’ve chosen a different one,” Sehun sighed, though he remembered how entranced he felt when he glanced at all the ships landing at the mountain train station. The big, black airships with their iron hulls and dark sails loomed over Sehun, but in between the mechanical row of them lined up like soldiers, a golden ship caught Sehun’s eye, and its shining dragon head and gently billowing, rich, purple sails called out to Sehun, beckoning him to come….to come….to come on board.   
  
“I was hoping it wasn’t a pirate ship. You’re not pirates, right?” Sehun asked, looking around at the three of them. They didn’t _look_ like pirates, but that didn’t mean they weren’t secret smugglers or dangerous dealers.  
  
“No, not at all,” Yifan chuckled, “We’re the furthest thing away from pirates, so don’t worry.”  
  
“We just transport medical supplies to out of reach hospitals in mountain communities who don’t always have enough supplies in stock,” Jongin piped up.  
  
“Oh. That’s nice,” Sehun nodded, “Can I help with that?”  
  
Please…don’t send him back.  
  
“Why did you try to stow away, Sehun?” Yifan asked instead of answering.  
  
“I felt like it,” Sehun shrugged.  
  
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth either.  
  
“So you just decided to conveniently sneak on _this_ ship…of all the ships there…just because you—” Luhan began to say before Sehun interrupted him.  
  
“I just _felt_ like it,” Sehun shrugged.  
  
“Really,” Yifan said, recalling the previous stowaways they encountered. Each of them had their reasons, some more malicious than others, but none of them reasoned with him like Sehun was currently doing.  
  
There was something about Yifan…the way his presence now seemed to fill the whole room even though there were other objects cluttered around that could have easily distracted from him, the way his perfect posture shamelessly put Sehun’s slouch to shame, the way he gazed expectantly, waiting for Sehun to give him the right answer.  
  
Yifan commanded power, and even though he did not press Sehun for answers he did not want to give, Sehun gave in and answered a small portion of the truth anyways.  
  
“I did it to prove I could,” Sehun admitted before switching to a pleading tone, “Please don’t send me back. They’d just laugh when I come back. I just wanted to—“  
  
“Who? Your parents? Wouldn’t they be worried?” Yifan asked, causing Jongin to wince at the topic.  
  
“No…not at all. But I promise I’ll make myself useful here! No one would miss me down there anyways,” Sehun said before interrupting the awkward silence in the air with further requests, “ _Please_.”  
  
“Of all the ships to steal away on, it just had to be _this_ one? Sorry, but we can drop you off at the next stop,” Luhan shook his head before Sehun’s face fell.  
  
He had been so tired of everyone in his work house rushing him along and telling him _no_ , there wasn’t enough time to do this, _no,_ he wasn’t allowed to do that so hurry along now and do as he was told. So he finally snapped when he accidentally let it slip that he wanted to see the sky and was met with choruses of  _you’ll never see the sky, Sehun. It’s too expensive and not a place for disobedient people like you. You belong in the city where you’ll rot for the rest of your life._  
  
And so he ran away anyways, ran towards the ships, ran towards the skies to spite them.  
  
It was probably good that Yifan’s crew had caught him this early because he had no idea, absolutely no idea of what he was actually doing because his top priority was getting on board, getting to see the sky, getting to live as he wanted away from the unforgiving factories of the city.  
  
And there was no way he could go back when he finally made it.  
  
_Here._  
  
“Down there…Down there, all I get are orders. Deadlines set by mechanical clocks and alarms. No you can’t do this. No you can’t do that. But this? I really want _this_. I wanted to prove to them that I could do this. I wanted to feel the sun from up here, see the sky, sail freely every day as long as I can,” Sehun tried to plead again, being more honest this time. Yifan studied him carefully, feeling nostalgic.  
  
“If we let you stay, where are you going? Where do you want to go? Surely you had a plan,” Yifan asked as he moved to pull the curtains of the room back to reveal nothing but the beautiful, blue horizon.  
  
No clouds. Just sky.  
  
And then there was Sehun.  
  
No plan. Just will.  
  
“There aren’t any _if’s_ , Yifan,” Luhan protested, “We can’t _let_ him onboard! Who knows where he came from, or if he wants to ki—“  
  
“Let him answer, Luhan,” Yifan said, raising a hand in the air to silence Luhan before turning expectantly to Sehun.  
  
“I don’t know. But I just needed to get away from down there,” Sehun said, not missing at all the smoky factories, the ashy gray faces of his cruel supervisors, the restricting soot and air that choked him.  
  
Silence.  
  
“Okay. You can stay,” Yifan smiled. Sehun reminded him of himself, and he understood that feeling, that feeling of wanting to ignore all the orders in life. Exchanging all those no’s for freedom, beautiful _freedom._  
  
“Yifan, is this really a good idea? We still don’t know if he’s dangerous or if he’s—” Luhan hissed as Yifan waved him aside, willing to take the risk.  
  
“Sehun, I hope you’re alright with danger,” Jongin excitedly said as Luhan continued to uselessly argue with Yifan, “Like cannonballs. Air fights. Escaping danger daily! Pirates! Everything! And turbulence sometimes so bad that you’re afraid you’re going to fall out of the sky any time.”  
  
“I’d suffer through it all since you’re letting me stay,” Sehun said, feeling so incredibly _relieved_.  
  
And free.  
  
“Welcome aboard,” Yifan announced cheerfully, ignoring Luhan’s protesting while Jongin clapped, excited that he had another friend.  
  
Free.

 

  

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
After Luhan and Jongin had excused themselves to go continue whatever tasks they had for the day, Yifan had insisted on showing Sehun around the ship starting with the upper deck. Sehun had enjoyed looking at the different parts of the ship Luhan and Jongin had pushed him past, but out here the open space was breathtakingly magnificent.  
  
The upper deck was pleasant, and Sehun enjoyed simply standing around as Yifan explained various safety procedures and other things as the breeze lightly tousled their hair. The deck was kept neatly clean, and nothing but the big, blue sky and a few sparse clouds stretched out for miles and miles and miles as far as Sehun could see.  
  
Straying from Yifan’s side for a moment, Sehun walked to the edge of the deck to peek at the sights below. He could not help but let out a stunned gasp as he reflexively tightened his grasp on the railing to make sure he was here, he was here, he was _here_ and not about to tumble up and over the railings to his death down there. But once the sheer terror of understanding how high up he was faded into wonderful astoundment, Sehun took a deep breath as he gazed at the beautiful sight below him. The ship was cruising along at a leisurely pace, and Sehun enjoyed looking at the little houses with steam gently bellowing out of the roofs that dotted the grassy landscapes below them, looking nothing more than little children’s model toys.  
  
Briefly he wondered how beautiful the city would look like at night if they passed it from above.  
  
Briefly he wondered if the distance and the sky could make those ashy factories look beautiful.  
  
Not so briefly he remembered nothing could make them beautiful at all.  
  
“What do you see?” Yifan asked Sehun after realizing he had been abandoned for the sights below. He leaned on the railings leisurely and sighed contentedly as he breathed in the fresh air and watched the landscapes that drifted by.  
  
“A view of something much more beautiful up here than it is down there,” Sehun said, still marveling at the beautiful country scenery below.  
  
“What do you want to see?” Yifan continued to ask Sehun.  
  
“What’s up there?” Sehun asked, turning his gaze away from the ground below and pointing upwards at the sky, the open, unexplored sky far above where they were now.  
  
“No one’s tried flying any higher than what we can see. But maybe one day we’ll set our courses for up there and see what else is beyond this,” Yifan said, raising a hand over his forehead to shield him from the brilliant sun as he tried to stare out into the sky above them.  
  
“Maybe one day we can touch the stars and bring one back. Imagine all the pirates that’d try and steal it from us,” Sehun laughed.  
  
“Most of them aren’t brave enough to fly too high. They mostly lurk around the lower parts of the skies hiding beneath clouds waiting for ships to attack,” Yifan said.  
  
“Down there…It’s so much better when you look at it up here, honestly,” Sehun sighed.  
  
“You choose what you want to see,” Yifan shrugged.  
  
“I feel sorry for all the people out there afraid of heights. They’ll never get to see or appreciate such a stunning sight,” Sehun openly said.  
  
“Oh, but Luhan sees it occasionally. He’s quite terrified of heights, so he only has to see it when he has to,” Yifan said.  
  
“Oh. Why is he up here then if he’s that afraid?” Sehun asked, tearing his gaze away from the ground below to ask Yifan.  
  
“Duty,” Yifan said at first before amending his statement, “Because he just wanted to.”  
  
“Well. Whatever duty he’s following, or whatever he wants must be really powerful then, Sehun admitted.  
  
“I know you’ve been straying away and not really paying attention,” Yifan shifted the subject. Sehun opened his mouth to sheepishly defend himself, but Yifan silenced him by continuing to speak, waving away his worry, “And I get it. It’s a spectacular sight you must be seeing and taking in for the first time, so I _get_ it. The first time I ever flew on one of these airships, I was attached to the railings looking beyond there myself. But when I show you the lower deck below, you have to _promise_ to stay with me and listen. It’s so easy to get lost down there, and we have…a couple rooms that are a little dangerous.”  
  
“Dangerous? What are you keeping down there? War machines? Bombs?” Sehun asked before promising.  
  
It was just a tiny little gilded ship. What could they be possibly keeping down there?  
  
The ship may have looked endearingly small when he first impulsively jumped onboard, but now as Yifan lead him down the golden, torch-lit stairs, Sehun realized just how wrong he was. The lower deck opened up to reveal a great expanse of hovering, flickering yellow lights determinedly keeping the darkness at bay. Their shadows bounced off the walls as Sehun and Yifan passed by endless corridors and hallways that seemed to stretch out forever in the void of the darkness. The lower deck was dizzyingly complex, and Sehun was so sure he’d be lost if he wasn’t careful and if he had to wander this labyrinth alone.  
  
“Yifan, we keep passing all these doors, but you’re not showing me anything inside. What’s in all of these rooms?” Sehun asked. Yifan stopped, turned to examine the door that they were standing beside, and shrugged.  
  
“You can open that one if you want and see for yourself. That one’s not dangerous,” Yifan said.  
  
Sehun paused, looking at the door. The knob was pitch black and appearing a little hazy as if it was made out of shadows. He was afraid that if he put his hand on it he’d be touching absolutely nothing.  
  
“Go on,” Yifan nodded, noticing Sehun’s hesitation.  
  
Sehun grabbed the doorknob, finding it actually solid despite its smoky appearance, and cautiously opened it.  
  
Oh.  
  
Well. It was just a simple room. An extra room with some desks around and maps hanging from the wall.  
  
Except.  
  
What was that?  
  
“Is that…ink? Ink? Dripping from the ceiling?” Sehun asked, pointing curiously at the little black droplets dripping down from the dark ceiling.  
  
“No, that’s what we thought too at first, but no. It’s just darkness. Harmless darkness,” Yifan said as if it was a completely normal thing to have darkness dripping from the ceiling.  
  
“Nice to know,” Sehun said before closing the door behind him. Well. Darkness leaking from the ceiling? Sehun was both terrified and intrigued to wonder what was in the other rooms below deck.  
  
Yifan lead him past more doors and allowed Sehun to look inside most of them. Sehun wondered exactly what type of an airship this was, if all airships were mysteriously as magical as this one, if he was going to die one day if he accidentally walked into the wrong room oh my _god_.  
  
One door with a pleasantly pink, translucent doorknob opened to reveal another empty room with pink bubbles nonchalantly floating around. Sehun was about to step inside to pop them for fun, only to be stopped immediately by Yifan who told him not to try because they toxically burned everything they touched when popped.  
  
Amazing.  
  
By now, after seeing so many of these rooms, Sehun had stopped questioning what the fuck was up with this airship, though still found it within himself to be impressed when he and Yifan stopped in front of a door with an invisible doorknob. He was even more impressed when he grabbed the air, twisted it, and pushed the door open to reveal a room with half of its floor seemingly missing.  
  
Fuck.  
  
“Oh no, watch!” Yifan said, and before Sehun could even scream, he strode from the safety of the doorframe, across the wooden floor, and _jumped_. Sehun didn’t know how he was going to tell Luhan and Jongin that their captain had just fucking jumped _off_ the ship and into the bright void below him, but as it turned out, he didn’t even need to, as Yifan was standing…on nothing? He was still _here_?  
  
“I want to call this the cleanest, clearest glass that I’m standing on, but I’m not even sure myself _what_ this is,” Yifan said, bending down to touch a floor that was not visibly there.  
  
“What the fuck is wrong with your ship,” Sehun gawked.  
  
“Come, try it out yourself! It’s safe. I think,” Yifan said, beckoning him to come stand on _nothing_ and just trust that he wouldn’t fall off.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Sehun cautiously stepped away from the doorframe, the wooden floor, placed a foot over nothing and prayed to anything and everything that it was as solid as Yifan promised. After placing some of his weight into the step, Sehun was pleasantly surprised to find it solid. So he cautiously took another step. And another step. And another. Until he was standing next to Yifan and staring at the open view below them. His heart beat so quickly, and impulsively, he jumped and laughed as he landed on something and not finding himself tumbling down, down, down to his death below.  
  
“Oh my god,” Yifan said, pressing a large hand to his chest after Sehun safely landed, “Don’t _do_ that. What if it breaks?”  
  
True.  
  
But he jumped one last time to spite Yifan.  
  
Yifan quickly ushered him out of the room and shut the door behind them before Sehun could jump anymore. He continued to hurry Sehun onwards, onwards, onwards, finally showing him where the kitchen was, where everyone ate together, where to go if he was ever hungry, where the laundry room was and how to distinguish between the laundry room and the room with the flying, sharp arrows despite both of their doors looking exactly the same. Sehun didn’t know how the airship could have a working water system after Yifan showed him the showers, but fuck…What made sense here anyways.  
  
Sehun did try his best to remember all of this important information and these locations, but he found his attention being pulled away from Yifan’s rambling and into the golden door that lead to what Yifan said was the engine room.  
  
And it was like a dream.  
  
Sehun found himself being increasingly transfixed by the door, the shining gold doorknob that seemed to emit brilliant light and the subtle ticking noise that echoed softly out of the cracks of the door putting him into a bit of a trance. The steamy heat steadily radiating outwards calmed him even further, pulling him in, and the sound of the gears inside turning and clicking was so mechanically comforting. So…soothing. The tick. tock. tick. tock reverberated in his heart, and Sehun slowly stretched out a hand to the golden doorknob. He wanted to see, to observe, to gaze at what spectacular things that enticing gold door had behind it. He was about to finally grasp the door handle and pull it op—  
  
“Time! Time to show you where you’ll be sleeping. Are you excited?” Yifan loudly said as he clapped his hands together and snapped Sehun out of his daze.  
  
Disappointed that he wouldn’t get to see what was inside just yet, Sehun promised to find the engine room again soon even if it took him forever to find and even if he lost all his time to search for it.  
  
“You’ll be rooming here, okay? You can take that bed on the left, since he has the right, and the showers are just around the corner,” Yifan announced when they finally made it to the sleeping quarters.  
  
“Who has the other be—” Sehun was about to say.  
  
“Luhan and Jongin are down across the other side of the hall if you need anything, and I’ll be somewhere around,” Yifan said before telling him dinner would be in a few hours.  
  
“Thanks. But who will I be sleeping with? Whose room is this, too? Who?” Sehun asked, though when he turned around, Yifan was gone.  
  
Oh. Well. He supposed he’d figure out sooner or later.   
  
With nothing else to do, Sehun stepped inside the room, his room now, and glanced at his surroundings. A large circular window separated the two beds, and a little perch was snugly fit so one or two people could sit there and gaze at the view above. Or below.  
  
Sehun didn’t really bring anything with him, so he figured he could borrow the clothes he found in the wardrobe on his side, which were somehow oddly his size. Glancing over, he wondered when his roommate would be back and looked over at his roommate’s side of the room, noticing the lack of personal belongings. There were only clothes in the wardrobe filled with many tank tops, books lying around…not that Sehun was actually looking through his roommate’s things or anything, no.  
  
Sehun wondered how he was to introduce himself to his roommate whenever he walked in. He hoped that Yifan had told his roommate that he would be staying and hoped  his roommate wouldn’t take it too badly since he would have to share a whole room with someone else for now, too.  
  
But soon, Sehun found himself dreaming and thinking of what his roommate would be like. What would his voice sound like? His laughter? Did he sing a lot? Did he sing at all? Sehun normally didn’t sing or talk very much, but he wouldn’t mind it if his roommate filled the ship with his voice. Okay he’d mind in the morning, but…still.  
  
Was he _beautiful_?  
  
Sehun grabbed a pillow off of his bed and buried his face in it as an image of a muscled stranger wearing those tank tops he found entered his mind.  
  
But Sehun gave up waiting for his roommate, finding his eyes drooping after such an eventful day, and soon slept peacefully among bed sheets and pillows with his limbs curled up together even though he was in a real bed and not a little cramped cupboard like before. He dreamt of glowing doors, ticking clocks, golden smiles, and that doorknob…that gilded doorknob…And he dreamt that he was reaching out to it…reaching out to touch it…and was just about to turn it and push it op—  
  
“Time! It’s time! Sehun, it’s time! Dinner’s ready, and Luhan’s cooking something special to celebrate your official welcome!” Jongin’s voice rang in from the other side of the door, his knocking abruptly pulling Sehun from his dreams.  
  
Sehun groaned and pushed himself off the bed, blinking as he fought to chase the golden images and dreams away from his mind.  
  
Maybe his roommate would show up for dinner?  
  
He didn’t.  
  
Dinner was a small affair. Just Yifan, Jongin, Luhan, and himself. But it was by no means any less quiet with less people. Yifan often told outrageously wild stories and jokes about his journeys, and everyone always indulged him with laughter, though Luhan still apprehensively glanced at Sehun as if he was afraid Sehun would do something wrong.  
  
Sehun had friends down below.   
  
Fine.  
  
Acquaintances.  
  
Fine.  
  
_Barely acquaintances._  
  
He interacted with so many people down below every day as a part of his boring, mechanical job in the work houses, but he had never laughed or enjoyed his time this much until he had met these people here above the smoky city, above the drifting clouds, above the ashy haze of the grayness below.  
  
“And then my pants caught fire!” Yifan said, slamming down his tankard of peach juice for emphasis, “My beautiful, skull-printed pants!”  
  
“Does that happen a lot,” Sehun snorted.  
  
“No...That was the most memorable time, though. Air pirates are ruthless,” Yifan sighed.  
  
“Do you encounter them a lot?” Sehun interestedly asked.  
  
“Oh yeah. The danger can sometimes be daily, Sehun. But you’ll get used to it. Don’t be too surprised if you get shot at,” Jongin smiled cheerfully as he reached for another slice of bread.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Jongin wasn’t wrong about the danger.  
  
Sehun wished he was wrong about the danger, but he fucking _wasn’t_ , and Sehun’s first experience with such danger was a casual morning attack from nearby air pirates that had spotted their magnificent ship and decided to target it.  
  
It was supposed to be a nice day. A pleasant day for cruising around. A fucking _beautiful_ day that was starting off wonderfully after breakfast on deck…until pirates just started _shooting_ at them oh my f—  
  
“Whoops…looks like breakfast is cut short,” Yifan nonchalantly said, putting down his scone as a bullet whizzed past his head before bravely running towards the steering wheel on the top deck.  
  
“Oh my god,” Sehun calmly said to himself as he clutched his knife he had been using to butter his bread with.  
  
“Jongin wake _up_ ,” Luhan hissed, pushing Jongin who had his head down on the table for a quick breakfast nap.  
  
“Oh my _god_ ,” Sehun not so calmly said to himself as another bullet grazed past his shoulder and shot straight through his bread.  
  
“Hold on tight, Sehun,” Yifan called out from the top deck as he spun the steering wheel with a dangerous smile.  
  
“Follow me, Sehun,” Jongin said, yawning as he pulled Sehun’s sleeve to beckon him to come, “I could use a little bit of help with the cannonballs.”  
  
Fuck.  
  
Cannonballs?  
  
What did Sehun plead his way into?  
  
Sehun trailed closely after Jongin, weaving past the hallways and corridors of the lower deck until they reached the armory room with rows of canons poking out of the windows. He tried his best to listen to Jongin as he explained the mechanics of shooting cannons and all the different steps and tools required to not blow everyone to pieces.  
  
_Okay._  
  
“Watch me once, and then jump in, okay?” Jongin said as he pulled out various tools.  
  
Sehun didn’t know how Jongin could normally manage all of this alone in time, but he seemed to move faster than anyone could normally move, efficiently and almost mechanically driving and turning what he called a sponge into the breech before pulling it out and tossing a cartridge full of black powder inside.  
  
“Slam the cartridge into the breech with this rammer,” Jongin said as he did what was explaining.  
  
Sehun tried his best to follow and listen to Jongin’s instructions, but the mechanical terminology was lost to him…. Which was the rammer again? Where did the cartridge go?  
  
Soon he realized it would be much easier if he just kept his own names for the tools. Like that big toothpick, that big cylinder stick, that other stick right there…  
  
“You have to remember to expose some of the powder and—” Jongin said after he pushed the priming wire down the vent. Whatever that meant.  
  
“How do you aim?” Sehun said, asking the important questions here.  
  
“I’m getting there! Be patient! But I’ll aim for us today since it’s your first time and we don’t want you to accidentally send it somewhere else,” Jongin said in between yawns.  
  
Sehun was sure Jongin would have slept through this whole aerial battle if Luhan didn’t wake him up.  
  
Jongin continued to work as he rapidly explained how to loop the wires, where to attach the hooks, and the remaining steps that Sehun was sure he’d need to practice multiple times before he could possibly try without Jongin’s help.  
  
“Then, you pull the lanyard, and there! Boom!” Jongin said, yelling above the din of the sudden explosion.  
  
“I see,” Sehun said, unable to hear himself over the thunderous noise.  
  
“Now help me grab the sponge…no that’s the _rammer_ ,” Jongin commanded as Sehun tried his best to wonder why the two cylinder sticks looked so fucking similar to each other.  
  
Soon, the two of them fell into a frantic rhythm, bracing themselves for any possible impact while preparing and firing the canon properly.  
  
Sehun didn’t quite know what the state of their ship was like now, but he just hoped they wouldn’t fall out of the sky if their ship suffered too many impacts.  
  
“Jongin, we’re taking too many hits. Yifan says to get us out of here,” a voice yelled above the mess and haze of the battle.  
  
“You sure?” Jongin said, turning around to face Luhan who abruptly ran in and leaned on the doorway to catch his breath momentarily, gunpowder smeared across his face.  
  
“Yeah, you know what to use,” Luhan said, nodding before he left as quickly as he came.  
  
Jongin paused and nodded before turning to Sehun, putting down the cannonball he had held.  
  
“Hey, pass me the little gold one,” Jongin said to Sehun.  
  
“This one?” Sehun asked, rummaging through the cannonballs before he pulled out a smaller, shining sphere that looked like it was made out of pure, glowing gold.  
  
“Yeah…–made that one,” Jongin proudly said as they prepared the canon like before and shot it off.  
  
“Who?” Sehun loudly asked, the name Jongin said lost in the wind and the loud cacophony of the battle.  
  
But Jongin never answered because the boom of the canon interrupted Sehun’s further attempts to ask who…who… _who_? One final bang erupted from the canon before golden smoke exploded in the air like a shimmering nebulous cloud, spinning and circling around and around as the ship lurched forwards, flying higher and higher and higher and further away leaving the pirates behind in a mess of golden smoke.  
  
“It’s time for lunch isn’t it? By now?” Jongin beamed that timeless grin at him after they were safely out of reach and away from the air pirates. Sehun looked up, exhausted, and smiled weakly.  
  
“What the hell. Why not,” Sehun said, allowing Jongin to pull him and up and lead him to the kitchen, “We didn’t even get to take any snack breaks in between the danger.”  
  
Jongin lead him past corridors, weaving around hallways and hallways, and Sehun remembered that door with that golden doorknob with the heat radiating out and the gentle ticking noise echoing from inside. He’d come back to find it again when he had time. He really would. He promised himself that.  
  
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Yifan said after he entered the room and slid down on the benches next to Luhan in the kitchen, who instantly berated him for not taking attempts on his life more seriously.  
  
“I can see why everyone said you shouldn’t fly an airship, Yifan,” Sehun said.  
  
“Me? Really, I just turn the steering wheel, I’m not the person who keeps us up in the air,” Yifan said amusedly.  
  
Then who?  
  
But Yifan didn’t linger on the subject, as he immediately asked the crew something completely unrelated in between yawns.  
  
“When is everyone free? Let’s all play a g..ame…..of mah…jong…”  
  
“Day.”  
  
“Day. I’m free during the day.”  
  
“Day? Okay let’s do it!”  
  
Sehun was still sitting silently, the question of _who_ feeling like it was about to burst out of his mouth. But it was now the past. The conversation had moved on. Time had passed.  
  
“I have time whenever I’m done with…whatever you’ll have me do today,” Sehun finally said before Yifan said he could swab the decks today before their game.  
  
This airship was confusingly complex and interminably vast, so Sehun sat there wondering where on earth all these who’s were hiding…where they could be…  
  
He also wondered how he was to find that golden room again.

  

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Swabbing the decks was not bad. Before, Sehun had spent some time in Luhan’s kitchen chopping up potatoes and vegetables with plastic knives since Luhan never trusted him with real knives out of fear of him being a dangerous threat. It was understandable given the circumstance, but Sehun could only slightly complain about the suspicious, distrustful looks Luhan would throw him every now and then as he butchered a chicken that Sehun didn’t even know where it came from.  
  
So swabbing the decks was not bad.  
  
A bit tiring, but not bad.  
  
At one o’clock, he’d begin, scrubbing the floor as best as he could, polishing the golden pipes, washing the sun-streaked windows.  
  
And after he thought he had done a lot of work, he’d glance at the clock hanging outside.  
  
1:07  
  
Fuck.  
  
There time was…moving excruciatingly slowly when Sehun didn’t want it to.  
  
But sometimes, he had Jongin for company, and time seemed to pass faster then, as Jongin made cleaning and mopping more fun than it was really was. Jongin was sweet, always rambling on about animals he had to leave behind and smiling those fond, ageless grins that would charm anyone from any place or time.  
  
Sometimes Jongin would ask him what his life was like down there, what did he do before he came here, why did he leave...and Sehun could not find himself able to completely lie to Jongin as he looked expectantly at him and waited for answers.  
  
So Sehun told him little bits of the truth. How the sun seemed absent so often in the city due to the smoky smog and burning ash of the factories, how working was exhausting when mechanical clocks would ring every hour to make sure progress was coming along properly, how there was no one as sweet or happy as Jongin down there. Jongin had laughed and wished Sehun only the kindest people to meet from now on, only the cleanest air to breathe in from now on, only a more pleasant, more beautiful life to live from now on.  
  
So yes. Cleaning the whole top deck was exhausting.  
  
But at least he could breathe up here away from the city, away from the smoke surrounded by this beautiful, blue horizon and this crisp, fresh air.  
  
After exhaustedly spending the whole day cleaning up, Sehun was ready to immediately crash into his bed and sleep until whenever he had to wake up tomorrow. But his roommate was still not back, and he was so curious about when he would appear, what he looked like, if he really existed. So Sehun determinedly tried to stay up late, sitting upright on his bed and moving restlessly to try and stay awake. But after so many hours of cleaning and helping out wherever, he fell asleep to thoughts of his roommate wherever he was. Whoever he was.

The night after that, he weakly and vaguely saw shadows dancing across the room as the door opened, quickly saw a glimpse of tousled, lightly moonlit hair, the outlines of muscles… _muscles_ …before he exhaustedly succumbed to his exhaustion and slept.   
  
At least his roommate did exist after all.  
  
Once the sun rose and streamed into the circular window of the room, Sehun awoke eagerly, remembering that he fell asleep just before his roommate had entered the room. But when he lifted his head and blearily rubbed his eyes before looking across the room, the bed was empty, leaving no sign that his roommate was there except for a little wrinkle in the blankets and a small dent on the pillow where his head had rested.  
  
That night, Sehun stubbornly tried waiting on the floor, thinking the ground would be too hard and cold for him to fall asleep on, so _surely_ he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. He was doing so well before he wondered why he thought lying down on the floor would be a good idea since his back was beginning to ache from all the sitting.  
  
But the next morning, he woke up with a blanket draped over him, and Sehun swore he’d do whatever it took to meet his roommate this next night.  
  
And so the next night, Sehun brought a blanket with him and waited outside the doorway for his roommate to come back.  
  
But alas, the next morning Sehun simply woke up in his own bed with bleary, distant memories of arms…strong arms lifting him up and gently leading him to bed. When he pushed the grogginess out of his mind, he immediately looked to his left and sighed once he saw the same empty bed, the same wrinkled sheets, the same vacant space.  
  
Yawning, he crawled out of bed, threw on some clean…er clothes and headed downstairs for breakfast.  
  
Breakfast was held inside today right on the other side of the kitchen, which Sehun hoped would put Luhan in a good mood. But as soon as he walked inside the kitchen, Luhan eyed him cautiously before warily telling him to sit and eat. But it was no matter for now. Jongin immediately began telling him more stories of all the dogs he was forced to leave at home before he found work on a mountain as a stable boy tending after the royal horses that—  
  
“Jongin…have some more of this bread,” Luhan aggressively pushed a piece of bread into Jongin’s mouth, his eyes flashing with warning.  
  
“Have you worked on the mountain before, too, Luhan? Before you sailed off?” Sehun asked, trying to attempt to have a civil conversation with Luhan.  
  
“I guess. I work wherever I’m needed,” Luhan curtly said before Yifan walked in with multiple bandanas hanging off of his black shirt today. Amazing.  
  
“Sehun, I need you today. Are you done with breakfast?” Yifan announced after he picked up a lemon scone Luhan had freshly baked in the morning.  
  
“Sure,” Sehun nodded, cramming in the last pieces of his half-eaten pastry before standing up, hoping that whatever Yifan needed him for would be better than cleaning the deck again.  
  
Yifan lead Sehun into his office and told him to wait as he pulled out his tools. Standing patiently, Sehun stared at the objects on the wall, now able to take the time to appreciate the different things Yifan had collected on his travels. Little shining chandeliers hung from the ceiling, rustling gently as the wind rushed in from the open window. A rotating globe hung off the wall and spun softly, and Sehun was sure the shimmering lights that dotted the map were places Yifan traveled. A beautifully gilded frame with precious jewels embedded into the wood hung above Yifan’s desk, though instead of a grand, picturesque view worthy of such a magnificent frame, little painted cartoonish figures decorated the canvas. Incredible.  
  
“Thanks for helping out today, Sehun. I really appreciate it,” Yifan said, turning back to give Sehun what he had been looking for.  
  
“You want me to hold this for you. Daffodils,” Sehun bemusedly said after Yifan handed him a vase full of those blooming, beautiful, golden flowers to hold so he could paint them.  
  
“I’m almost done painting, so it won’t be too long,” Yifan said as he squeezed out some bright yellow paint into his palette.  
  
“Sure,” Sehun said, hoping his arms wouldn’t tire out before Yifan finished.  
  
“You know, for someone who supposedly hates orders and people telling him what to do, you’re taking your place on this ship seriously and listening well,” Yifan off-handedly said from behind the giant easel.  
  
“But I want to,” Sehun shrugged, “I want to be here. I like it so far even though I almost died like…three times straight this week. It’s better than down below, so I don’t mind. It was my choice, so I don’t mind…I don’t mind at _all_.”  
  
And besides. The orders that Sehun had to follow here were delivered much more kindly. Less condescendingly.   
  
“Hold the daffodils a little higher, please,” Yifan laughed, though he understood.  
  
“Are you done yet,” Sehun asked, attempting to sound casual about it even though his arms were hurting a little more than he’d like to admit. Yifan remained silent, concentrating on his art for a few more moments before nodding.  
  
“Yeah. Come look,” He said, placing down his paintbrushes at last. Sehun eagerly put down the daffodils to come take a look.  
  
“Yifan…” Sehun began to say as soon as he looked at Yifan’s painting, not quite sure what he could say.  
  
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I’m so amazing,” Yifan sighed.  
  
“I…I thought you were drawing daffodils?” Sehun incredulously said as he continued to stare not at acrylic flowers, but an array of magnificent…stick animals?  
  
“I see daffodils, but I chose to paint something else. Whatever I want. It’s all how you see things, you know? What you see, what others see, what you choose to see. There’s always a choice,” Yifan said as he bent down to sign his name on the bottom of the painting.  
  
And that was true.  
  
Yifan saw daffodils, but chose to draw something else.  
  
Sehun saw the vast sky in front of him and saw freedom. Life.  
  
Luhan saw the vast sky in front of them and saw fear. Death.  
  
There was always a choice. A choice to see whatever, love whoever, do whatever. But now, Sehun was choosing to actively seek out and find his roommate, wishing to see for himself what he had been unable to see for so long, and in a way, his roommate was like that golden door to Sehun.

Beautiful, bright, but so out of reach.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
If Sehun could not wait for his roommate to come to him, he would find him himself.  
  
At lunchtime, he was sulking on the kitchen bench, wondering aloud why he had not met his roommate yet, all while Jongin looked amusedly at him. He was sweet, but not sweet enough to even tell him his roommate’s name.  
  
Sehun sighed as he stared out the kitchen window…and suddenly he caught a glimpse of someone walking past the windows he washed just yesterday.  
  
Wait.  
  
Sehun abruptly stood up, excitedly pointing at the window.  
  
“Him…Him! Is that him?” Sehun wildly asked Jongin, Luhan, whoever was here…whoever would _answer_.  
  
“Who?” Jongin asked.  
  
“…Who?” Luhan echoed.  
  
Who?  
  
Who.  
  
Who _else_.  
  
Leaping out of the bench, Sehun ran out of the kitchen, unable to wait any longer for answers the two of them might have given because time was ticking, and the moment to choose to act was rapidly falling away just like seconds would fall from the clock as every hour passed.  
  
So Sehun chose to follow.  
  
Breathless, Sehun ran right now, right here, pushing the door open and followed in pursuit. Here he was…trying to catch up to the person who he just  _knew_ would be who he was looking for, who he wanted to see.  
  
He had escaped Sehun’s sights for so long, but not today.  
  
Sehun would seize the sights for himself today, just as he seized the sky for himself.  
  
He chose to run after this person, and as he caught a glimpse of goggles swinging in a hand that shut the door to the lower deck, Sehun urged himself onwards faster and faster and faster and wrenched open the door and threw himself into the dim darkness knowing very well he could get lost.  
  
And he did get lost.  
  
He ran throughout the lower deck, trying to find which corner the person turned into, which room could he possibly be hiding in. He continued to run throughout the corridors, pressing himself against every winding turn, making the yellow flames dance as he whooshed past the torches that lit the way until he finally stopped in his tracks.  
  
Sehun took the time to rest for a moment to catch his breath until he had realized he lost him again. _No. L_ ooking back, Sehun was ready to disappointedly try to find his way out before he got lost down there permanently. But curiosity made his feet take several soft steps forward until a muffled, booming melody echoed. The musical chiming announcing the hour resonated in Sehun’s heart, and while he didn’t know what clock this was or where it was, he closed his eyes and listened to the time.  
  
When the music stopped, as soon as the first boom of the unseen clock that reverberated throughout the ship to signal the hour sounded, Sehun found himself running again, running with his heart open and listening to where the sound was coming from.  
  
Again the clock struck, and again Sehun ran, not knowing where, but following the sound.  
  
Again the clock struck, and this time, Sehun ran deeper and deeper and turned around corners all around the ship until the time stopped.  
  
Three echoes.  
  
Three o’clock.  
  
Sehun didn’t know where he was and was about to be concerned with how lost he probably was, but then he heard it.  
  
The ticking noises.  
  
The soft ticking entranced him, chased all thoughts of his roommate from his mind, and so he took a step…another step…not really knowing where he was going, but just trying to follow the ticking. He turned a corner, the noises echoing and growing louder and louder and louder, the deafening silence punctuated by that ticking reverberating in his heart, and he kept walking and listening until –  
  
_There._  
  
That golden door. That gilded doorknob. That engine room.  
  
As if it were like a dream or like his own dreams, Sehun found himself reaching forwards, the doorknob almost in his grasp, just reaching, reaching, reaching…But unlike his dreams, this time…this time… _this time_ …he finally caught the doorknob in his hand and twisted it open to feel an oncoming rush of heat waves gently wash over him.  
  
The engine room was nothing and everything like Sehun imagined it to be, with its brightly, dim ambience. An enormous clock, the biggest clock in this ship by far, hung in the far corner with golden wings protruding from its sides as the ticks and tocks continued to steadily echo everywhere. There were little gears mounted on the wall, turning and clicking away as the furnace in the back of the room radiated warmth, little yellow, flickering flames dancing pleasantly in the corner, licking the coal that someone was shoveling.  
  
That person, upon noticing a foreign presence in the room, straightened up, lifted his goggles from his eyes, and pushed them to his forehead before uttering a question across the room.  
  
“Hello? Who are you?” The man asked, leaning on his coal dusted shovel.  
  
Sehun’s mouth felt dry, though it must’ve been the heat that inhibited his ability to speak. He tried again…tried to open his mouth, but stared at the man’s entrancingly curved lips, his beautifully tousled hair, and those muscular arms that the tight tank top he wore exposed delightfully. And then shut his mouth. Again.  
  
“Are you alright there?” the man smiled, the corners of his lips curling even more. Sehun felt weak. Absolutely weak. He was already exposed to the calming sounds of the mechanical clock, the soothing heat of the furnace, and now this man’s beautiful smile? That was it. That was absolutely it. _Fuck_.  
  
“Who are you?” Sehun finally said.  
  
“The ship’s engineer,” the man said, “Now who are you?”  
  
“The ship’s ex-stowaway,” Sehun said, stepping from the shadows and into the light and heat of the furnace to glance at the engineer better.  
  
“Oh!” the engineer said, widening his eyes as he got a better look at Sehun.  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” he said, his lips playfully curling with contentment as he looked Sehun over.  
  
“So…what do you do here?” Sehun said, stretching out a hand to lean coolly on the furnace before he realized it was a fucking furnace and withdrew his hand quickly, which caused him to lose his balance.  
  
“Careful,” the engineer laughed, reaching out to steady Sehun with an arm…a very strong arm. Sehun was sure that the swooning he felt himself on the verge of was due to the very hot heat waves that were gently bellowing out of the furnace and not because of how overwhelmed he was by this man, no.  
  
“A dramatic description of this job would be preventing everyone from falling out of the sky…But mostly I just make sure all the mechanics are functioning well and properly. And I shovel coal,” the engineer said, leaning on his dusty shovel as he spoke.  
  
Sehun glanced at the large pile of coal that still had to be shoveled into the furnace and glanced back at the man.  
  
“Can I help?” Sehun asked.  
  
The man let out a pleasantly sparkling, beautiful laugh that made Sehun’s breath catch in his throat.  
  
“Are you sure? It’s hard work,” He said.  
  
“Of course! How hard could it be?” Sehun said.  
  
Amused, the man handed over the shovel to Sehun before standing back to watch him.  
  
So Sehun began to shovel. And shovel. And shovel…and all was going well and he was making decent progress with the large mountain of coals beside them until…  
  
“I see,” Sehun said, panting slightly as he paused to lean on his shovel.  
  
“I don’t think you’re strong enough to finish that,” the man teased.  
  
“I am! Just watch me,” Sehun scowled, finding the energy to shovel more just to prove he could.  
  
“Here…I’ll help you,” the man pleasantly suggested, retrieving another shovel from the table near them before he began shoveling next to Sehun.  
  
“What do you do here normally anyways? Did you get lost and end up here?” The man said between shovels.  
  
“Mostly I’ve been cleaning up the deck or doing whatever needs to be done. Recently I held a vase of daffodils for Yifan,” Sehun panted.  
  
“Unfortunate. You could’ve asked him to send you down here to shovel for ages until you finally grow some muscles,” the man said as he shoveled the last of the coal into the blazing furnace.  
  
Sehun looked up, a reply just waiting to spill from his lips, but the clock in the corner struck, choosing this moment to interrupt them and remind them of the time.  
  
Seven o’clock.  
  
Oh. Time had passed by that quickly? Sehun could’ve sworn it was just three o’clock a few moments ago…  
  
There time was again, racing so heartbreakingly quickly when Sehun didn’t want it to.  
  
“That’s dinner time today. Are you coming, too?” Sehun asked the engineer.  
  
“No…I still have other work I have to do,” the engineer shook his head.  
  
“Please? Can’t it wait?” Sehun continued to plead.  
  
“Unfortunately not,” the engineer smiled, “Go on and eat, okay?”  
  
“Fine. But I’ll be back so I can show you how strong I can be,” Sehun scowled.  
  
“I’ll be here. Come back anytime you can,” The engineer smiled.  
  
Sehun promised, and that night while he hoped to see his roommate back in his room, he wasn’t as disappointed when he walked in to see empty sheets and empty space.  
  
And that night, he dreamt of a golden door that he could finally open to reveal sweet, curved smiles behind it.

  

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Having his curiosity increasingly piqued, Sehun had managed to finish his chores and duties in half the time in order to sneak down and visit the engineer between breaks or whenever he could.  
  
But visits weren’t enough, Sehun soon found himself realizing.  
  
He wanted more time with the engineer…time to talk about anything and everything, time to listen about stories experienced while sailing through the air, time to just be together and appreciate each other’s mere presences.  
  
So at breakfast one morning, Sehun finally asked if he could have that extra time.  
  
“Yifan, can I be relocated to the engine room? I think I’d rather help keep the furnace lit and steam power going there,” Sehun announced, “But of course when the ship does need cleaning, I can do that, too.”  
  
“Oh, I see you’ve finally met –“ Yifan began to say before Luhan interrupted him.  
  
“Absolutely _not_ ,” Luhan shook his head, “What if you accidentally touch something and cause this whole ship to explode or fall to the sky? I’ll—“  
  
“Luhan, he means no harm. I’m sure he just—“ Yifan said.  
  
“How would you know that? He literally showed up not a long time ago, and—” Luhan began to argue.  
  
“Can you both _stop_ interrupting each other?” Jongin sighed, “You’re missing the point. Wouldn’t it be good for him? After…all that’s happened?”  
  
From the way Yifan and Luhan immediately ceased their bickering and looked at each other resignedly, Sehun was sure…this wasn’t about him.  
  
“Have you visited the engine room before? Did you stay long?” Yifan asked Sehun slowly.  
  
“I have multiple times, but I swear I finished all my tasks you assigned first! I stayed as long as I could. Your engineer is so wonderful and charming and intelligent, but he doesn’t seem to come out of his room much though,” Sehun said, not even bothering to hide his interest in or awe of the engineer.  
  
“Did he react well to you being there?” Jongin asked hopefully, “He didn’t try to make you leave?”  
  
“I…” Sehun began to say, recalling the way the engineer would often sigh and wish Sehun could stay there longer with him, the way the engineer would greet Sehun with those beautiful smiles every time Sehun snuck into the engine room, the way the engineer would look regretfully at the clock whenever the time for dinner struck, the way the engineer would look so pleased when Sehun promised he’d come back, always come back whenever he had time.  
  
“I think so…I _hope_ so,” Sehun nodded.  
  
“Lucky,” Jongin sighed wistfully, a tinge of something tainting his smile, “I’ll take you to the engine room myself now if you want.”  
  
Sehun thanked him as Luhan glared across the table, though was more hesitant this time.  
  
“Lighten up, Luhan. Sehun’s been a good help so far, and besides! We’ll be landing soon for supplies and rest and shopping, so just hold on until then,” Yifan said before adding, “And think of—“  
  
But this time, it was Sehun’s own fault he couldn’t catch the name…catch the _who_ because he already interrupted.  
  
“We’re going to be landing down in the city already?” Sehun asked, his heart sinking at the thought of having to be back down below again. It would have been nice to escape it for longer, and he was so sure that Luhan would cart him off the ship the second they landed.   
  
“Not at all,” Yifan said, to Sehun’s relief, “We’re just going to stop by a nearby mountain community for some rest and so we can repair and replace some parts of the ship if we need to after all those pirates. I think you’ll really like the sights they have to offer there, Sehun.”  
  
Sehun simply smiled, pleased he wasn’t going back down there just yet.  
  
Jongin stood up abruptly, pulling on Sehun’s sleeve, ready to lead Sehun back down to the engine room. Once they had walked down to the lower deck, Sehun didn’t realize how well Jongin could navigate because Jongin had swiftly lead him through all the turns and corners of the place until they were right there. Right in front of that golden door. That gilded doorknob. That ticking engine room.  
  
“I’ll see you in a bit, okay?” Jongin said before taking a step back and beginning to retreat into the shadows that the golden lights could not reach.  
  
“Don’t you want to go inside? And say hello for a bit?” Sehun asked, his hand resting on the doorknob.  
  
“I don’t think it’s the right time for me to do that,” Jongin shook his head, the shadows making his hair appear neither gray nor new, his smile neither happy nor discontent, his face neither old nor young. Without a further word, he turned around and fled, leaving Sehun in front of the door alone.  
  
Sehun paused for a moment to think of how oddly everyone had acted, but shook those thoughts from his mind as the calming heat soothed him when he opened the door.  
  
“Have you come today to build up your arm muscles?” the engineer greeted cheerfully as he cleaned the lenses of his goggles over the workroom table.  
  
“What do you mean _build up_?” Sehun grinned, flexing his bicep to show the engineer, “I think mine are just fine.”  
  
“Really?” the engineer said, putting down his goggles and removing his gloves before striding over to touch Sehun’s arm, his fingers trailing lightly over Sehun’s skin after they lingered a second longer after he was done touching, “I think they’re quite nice already, too, but I’ll be the one doing all the work in the end if you don’t get stronger. Not that I mind.”  
  
“Oh yeah? Then what about you?” Sehun teased, pointing at the engineer’s arms. The engineer raised an eyebrow before offering an arm out for Sehun, who reached out to squeeze the engineer’s biceps.  
  
Ha.  
  
What. A. Mistake.  
  
_Fuck_.  
  
The engineer’s biceps were as strong and toned as they looked, and Sehun persistently blamed the heat of the furnace that caused a big blush to spread across his face even though the temperature of the room was only a small fraction of the reason why.  
  
“What’s your name?” the engineer finally asked him, “If I’m going to be seeing you often, I can’t just call you stowaway.”  
  
“Do you want to know how I introduced myself to the rest of your crew when they found me?” the stowaway asked, snapping out of his entranced state, “Sleepy. Stowaway. Sehun.”  
  
“Aww that’s so _cute_ ,” the engineer cooed, “In that case, I’m Jabbery. Jem. Jongdae.”  
  
Jongdae.  
  
Sehun let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding, and exhaled Jongdae, Jongdae, _Jongdae._ What a beautiful name…He was so delighted by the name itself, the sound of the name, the person behind the name that he couldn’t find the energy to tease the man in front of him that technically Jem didn’t count because it started with a g not a j, to do anything but stare in astounded admiration, to notice that the golden winged clock in the corner of the room boomed to signal the hour as its flashing, shining wings fluttered.  
  
“Jongdae,” Sehun said as he exhaled again, as he breathed again.  
  
Jongdae.  
  
“Jongdae,” Sehun smiled.  
  
“What?” Jongdae laughed, “Is there something wrong with my name?”  
  
“Not at all! It’s beautiful…Jongdae,” Sehun said.  
  
“Sehun, Sehun,  _Sehun_ …I’m going to repeat yours just as many times as you say mine then,” Jongdae said.  
  
Both of them waited for the other to repeat their names, but when silence fell, the two of them just let time pass as they stared at each other fondly. But the crackle of the furnace interrupted them, jolted them out of their growing affection and warm gazes, and Jongdae immediately leapt back into action, returned to work, returned to the present, mechanical time where he had no spare moment to be distracted by anything.  
  
“How often do you have to refill the furnace?” Sehun said as he stooped beside Jongdae to pick up a spare shovel before shoveling coal with him into the furnace while steam drifted lazily out of the pipes above, “Whenever I stop by, you’re almost always refilling the furnace.”  
  
“It’s better to be safe than sorry,” Jongdae answered, restlessly continuing to pile coal into the furnace.  
  
“Where do you even keep all this coal anyways? Surely you’d run out after doing this every day…night…time,” Sehun said as he paused to take a short break.  
  
“You’d be surprised to see what we have in this ship, Sehun,” Jongdae said.  
  
“ _Really_ ,” Sehun hummed while thinking of that fucking hole in the ship.  
  
“Really. Like…there’s a captain who thinks baggy skull-printed pants were the best thing he’s worn since that hideously mustard yellow shirt, a chef on an airship afraid of heights, a stable boy with no horses to look after up here,” Jongdae said.  
  
“And you. A wonderful, hard-working engineer,” Sehun said, feeling quite brave in that moment.  
  
“I don’t know about wonderful, but sure,” Jongdae laughed, “And then there’s you, too. The most interesting stowaway we’ve had so far.”  
  
“There were more before me?” Sehun asked.  
  
“I think a couple…I don’t remember them too much because Yifan didn’t let them stay. Luhan especially.”  
  
“Oh. Why would he let me stay then?” Sehun asked.  
  
“Maybe he saw something in you. Something different. Something daring…Someone to hold his daffodils,” Jongdae said.  
  
“ _Anyone_ can do that, Jongdae,” Sehun rolled his eyes, but his heart was beating quicker and quicker, speeding ahead of the steady pace of the ticking clock in the room and fluttering faster than the wings of the clock whenever they flapped on the hour.  
  
“Still. You’re an amazing person, Sehun. I don’t know why you’d want to escape up here, but I’m glad you’re here,” Jongdae smiled genuinely.  
  
“To escape the city down there. To see the sky…To live how I wanted,” Sehun answered honestly.  
  
“I actually miss down there sometimes,” Jongdae said after a moment of hesitation.  
  
“Well. Then I wish I could see what you see in that city below,” Sehun shrugged.  
  
“I wish I could show you,” Jongdae said, grateful that the hour had rung loudly, excusing him from having to think more about the topic before he’d allow tears to prick his eyes, fear to prick his mind, regret to prick his heart.  
  
“It’s dinner time,” Jongdae said, looking up at Sehun with eyes that began to blur from oncoming tears as three timid knocks echoed across the room from the door, “And I think your escort is here. Go eat, okay?”  
  
“But what about _you_ ,” Sehun sighed, ignoring Jongin’s more insistent knocking that soon followed, “Won’t you come up and eat, too?”  
  
“I have to take care of this ship, Sehun, and make sure nothing bad happens so the ship won’t fall out of the sky, so the others will be fine, so you’ll be alive,” Jongdae shook his head, grabbing Sehun’s arm to lead him towards the door.  
  
“Go,” Jongdae said, opening the door before beginning to push Sehun out, “Find me when you have more time again.”  
  
Sehun found himself trapped…trapped between the seconds of the clock, wishing that it would have more minutes in an hour so he could spend more time with Jongdae.  
  
The last image of Jongdae, looking desperate, tired, and trying so hard to force a smile that simply was not felt into his beautifully curved lips before the golden door closed and trapped him inside the engine room haunted Sehun.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Sehun was more careful the next time he visited Jongdae.  
  
The image of Jongdae with red-rimmed eyes on the verge of tears was something Sehun never wanted to see or happen again, and if talk or mentions of the city forced Jongdae to re-experience unpleasant memories, then he was more than happy to never speak of the city again. After all, it was the city, and Sehun was ready to leave it in the past where it belonged.  
  
Sehun was still curious, though…curious of why Jongdae refused to go eat with the others, why everyone else always talked about Jongdae delicately, why Jongdae always seemed to be forever worrying about and working on the ship despite its lack of need for continual maintenance.   
  
But he figured if Jongdae would ever wish to tell him, he’d tell him on his own time.  
  
So Sehun didn’t ask, didn’t push any unnecessary questions or comments that might upset Jongdae, and simply opened the door to the engine room with a smile and a regular greeting.  
  
Jongdae had apparently hidden or chose to forget about the beginning pangs of the earlier deep, weary sadness he felt the night before, as he looked up from his workbench excitedly when Sehun showed up and greeted him with a smile.  
  
“Are you excited, Sehun? Today, we’re not going to be shoveling much. Let’s make flash bombs,” Jongdae said, beckoning for Sehun to come sit next to him.  
  
“Flash bombs?” Sehun asked while sitting beside Jongdae. This was the first time that the two of them would not be shoveling, and Sehun appreciated the slight change in routine.  
  
“We’re going to lightly forge this golden dust we found in one of the rooms with iron to make them,” Jongdae said, pushing a box filled with what looked like the golden dust towards Sehun. He then secured a pair of goggles over his eyes before handing Sehun a pair of brass ones.  
  
After putting on his own pair of goggles, Sehun peered into the box and, without any hesitation, lightly picked up some of the golden dust and let it fall through his hands. The yellow light of the room danced and reflected into the dust until it shone beautifully. _Oh_. This must have been what Jongin used to escape from the first pirate attack Sehun witnessed. Jongdae then showed him how they were creating the bombs, moving over to the furnace holding half-spherical molds with heavily gloved hands. After waiting long enough for the iron to be hot enough, Jongdae poured the iron into the molds and motioned for Sehun to sprinkle in some gold dust into each of the halves. And then he carefully shut them with his tools, the heat of the forge left to meld them together.  
  
“How does that work in the end? Jongin used it once…but how does that expand to all that shining, golden clouds?” Sehun asked.  
  
“I’m not sure actually. There must be something in the ship…its rooms…whatever’s here…because even though it’s constructed exactly like a solid shot, instead of maintaining its shape when shot off, it just explodes into a dusty, shining cloud that we can escape into or out of,” Jongdae explained.  
  
“How did you figure this out?” Sehun asked.  
  
Jongdae only offered a sweet, bright smile in return, and while Sehun was still left curious with how odd this ship and its rooms were, he found himself pleasantly distracted instead, and he was getting so caught up in tracing the curve of Jongdae’s lips with his eyes that Jongdae had to call three times…unsuccessfully.  
  
“Are you listening?” Jongdae said, poking Sehun’s arm with a free elbow before gesturing with his head towards the waiting iron.  
  
“Oh, right! _Right_! Sorry,” Sehun shook his head, snapping out of the warm daze Jongdae and his lips sent him into. He immediately bent over to sprinkle more golden dust into the blazing, liquid iron before stepping backwards to let Jongdae carefully seal them together.  
  
Again and again, the two of them repeated the process until they had ten flash bombs cooling in the corner of the workbench, almost ready for use whenever some pirates would attack.  
  
“Thanks for your help,” Jongdae said as he tiredly sat down and removed his gloves and pushed his goggles off his eyes and onto his forehead.  
  
“It’s no problem at all I had fun with you,” Sehun said before hastily continuing to speak after Jongdae interestedly raised an eyebrow, “…doing this! I had fun with you doing this.”  
  
“You’re so sweet, Sehun,” Jongdae laughed, the sound making Sehun’s chest feel tight in the most pleasant of ways. Not the way it would feel tight and overwhelming below in the city when he breathed in so much ash and smoke that he was left gasping and choking.  
  
“Jongdae, I—” Sehun was beginning to say, feeling brave in the moment, before he was interrupted by Jongin, who knocked on the door three times.  
  
“Time! It’s time,” Jongin called from behind the door as the clock boomed in the corner, its wings fluttering with every announcement of the hour, “Sehun, it’s time…Dinner time!”  
  
“Let’s go, Jongdae,” Sehun said, pointing towards the door.  
  
“I’ll stay here again,” Jongdae said, “I’m not hungry now.”  
  
“Then I’ll stay with you,” Sehun said, though his stomach chose that exact moment to betray him by letting out a growl to suggest otherwise.  
  
“Go, Sehun. Really! I’ll be fine,” Jongdae laughed.  
  
“Can I at least bring you something back to eat?” Sehun asked, worried about Jongdae.  
  
“When I’m hungry, I’ll come looking for something on my own time. Don’t worry, really. Just go! Eat lots for me,” Jongdae said, pushing Sehun towards the door.  
  
“Fine. Can I come tomorrow?” Sehun asked.  
  
“When have you asked anyways?” Jongdae asked with a smile, “I would love that. I would love your company again…as often as possible.”   
  
“Then I’ll come as often as possible. Tomorrow. And all the days after that. Just like now, and just like always,” Sehun smiled, and forgot of his curiosity about his roommate for that moment.  
  
Jongdae smiled at Sehun’s words before taking a deep breath and poking his head out the golden door, his gaze softening when he found Jongin waiting in the shadows for Sehun.  
  
“Hello, Jongin. I hope you’ve been well,” Jongdae said.  
  
“Jongdae,” Jongin said, a brilliant grin beginning to stretch across his face, “I _missed_ you.”  
  
“I missed you too, Jongin. So _much_ ,” Jongdae said, gripping the edge of the door to ground him in the present.  
  
“Are you okay? Doing better?” Jongin began to carefully ask, “Do you think you can come eat with us sometime?”  
  
“I keep _asking_ him that, but he always refuses…it’s always the ship he’s so scared of leaving alone even though we both _know_ he’s done more than enough to make it fly efficiently and safely,” Sehun shook his head, staring at Jongdae…beautiful Jongdae who was standing, shining in the spectacular light as steam drifted behind him.  
  
Jongdae listened to the two of them bicker good-naturedly, arguing over who he should sit next to when they ate.  
  
“He can sit next to the _both_ of us, Jongin,” Sehun shook his head, “Jongdae has _two sides_.”  
  
“What about Luhan and Yifan?” Jongin protested, “Jongdae can sit next to me and you can fight Luhan and Yifan for the other spot next to him.”  
  
Jongdae began to picture what eating with everyone again would be like...how Luhan’s warm food would taste, how Yifan’s endearingly off tune whistling would sound like, how Jongin’s spectacularly serene smile would look like, how Sehun’s laughter would feel when it struck Jongdae’s heart…He yearned to leave this room, this engine room, wishing so desperately that he could step out the door and leave with Jongin and Sehun to such a dinner, but he felt his feet rooted here, his mind rooted in the past, his heart rooted with worry. It was still hard to overcome those infernal, internal chains that shackled him to the past, but Jongdae was finding his own way, struggling onwards. Sometimes Sehun helped to carry the chains and made it easier, but in the end, Jongdae was the only one with the key to free himself.  
  
And he was trying.  
  
So one day maybe.  
  
So one night maybe.  
  
So one time maybe.  
  
“Soon,” he softly replied before gently closing the golden door behind him.  
  
Soon, he hoped.  
  
Soon. 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Pirate attacks were never enjoyable. There was just something inexplicably _unpleasant_ about having to put aside the time, time interrupted by an attack, that could have been spent being productive instead of being spent fighting to stay in the air. The airship was a relatively new technology firstly introduced to the royal prince as a gift, so while the military had already leapt upon the new technology and built weaponized, bigger, blacker versions of the original for their own purposes, smaller commercial ships for transporting people or trading goods such as Yifan’s own ship were developed.  
  
Which meant that very few rules and regulations had been placed over the sky and the ships that sailed through it.  
  
Which meant that pirates saw the opportunity to take whatever the sky offered them and prowled under the clouds waiting for non-military ships to pass.  
  
Which meant that Sehun was by now used to the weekly or sometimes multiple-times-per-week attacks that rocked the ship and often left bullet holes in the deck that somehow disappeared or repaired themselves the week later.  
  
But that did not mean he resented them any less.  
  
“Don’t they have anything better to do with their time,” Sehun grumbled as he blearily handed Jongin a cannonball as the sun’s dawning rays slowly streamed through the room, yellow light dancing among the bursts of cannons.  
  
“I wish…but unfortunately whenever they do something like this, no one has any time to do whatever they want. It’s just fighting, fighting, and a little bit of fear,” Jongin said as he immediately began preparing the cannon for the next shot.  
  
“Have you ever been boarded before by pirates?” Sehun asked as a gentle explosion rocked the ship.  
  
“Hm…once or twice if I remember properly,” Jongin said, “Usually we’re more careful so that never happens, but one pirate ship had a cloaking device. We never saw it coming.”  
  
Jongin took in the way Sehun’s fingers trembled slightly as he gripped the bomb tighter and tighter, and reached out to pat Sehun’s shoulder with a sooty hand.  
  
“But don’t be afraid! Luhan’s the best fighter on this ship, and we’ve survived! It’s okay!” Jongin tried to reassure Sehun.  
  
But the ship shook again, multiple impacts causing Sehun to reach out and hold the nearest surface in order to steady himself.  
  
“We’ll be fine,” Jongin said again, working to reload the canon as Sehun fought to try and keep up with him.  
  
The two of them worked silently, Jongin occasionally prompting Sehun with orders. Sehun was glad he had been shoveling coal with Jongdae because he was sure his arms would have never been able to lift all those cannonballs otherwise.  
  
But when Luhan ran inside the engine room just like all those other times to urgently tell them to get them out of here, Sehun ceased working for a second to think, to worry about what might happen if they were to fall out of the sky right now.  
  
“No, don’t worry. It doesn’t mean we’re in a bad situation always! We could theoretically defeat them,” Jongin said, “But Yifan doesn’t want the people down there to suffer if debris from the ship or the falling ships themselves fall on them, so escaping is easier on everyone. Can you hand me a flash bomb please?”  
  
And this time… _this_ time when Jongin commented on those golden spheres, Sehun caught the name.  
  
“Jongdae made these,” Jongin absent-mindedly said as Sehun passed him a golden flash bomb.  
  
There was something about Jongdae’s name, the way that whenever Sehun heard it he felt at peace, so content and pleased with the sound that it reminded him of home.  
  
“Jongdae,” Sehun smiled as the ship lurched forward and flew out of the golden dust, out of the destruction, and into the horizon.  
  
“Jongdae,” Jongin said thoughtfully, “How does he let you into his engine room so often? Lately he’s been terrified of any distractions that might cause him to accidentally cause the ship to fall out of the sky.”  
  
“Distractions?” Sehun said, realizing how he was perhaps the biggest distraction to Jongdae’s work, as he often interrupted Jongdae to ask questions, wasted minutes complaining about how he had to leave Jongdae already when the time came, brought Jongdae’s attention away from work to talk about other things.  
  
“Yeah. Something happened that no one especially him enjoys talking about, so now he’s tried to be more careful,” Jongin shook his head.  
  
“Oh. Does he blame himself for it?” Sehun asked.  
  
“It wasn’t his fault. There was nothing he could’ve done about it at all,” Jongin tried to smile, but gave up after presenting Sehun with a half-hearted wince.  
  
Sehun thought of all the little moments were Jongdae would slip up, panic over the slightest wrong gear shift in the engine room, and look so irrevocably  _sad_ every time he remembered those tragic times from his past.  
  
“He’s a little bit of a shadow of what he used to be, and we’re just trying to give him space so he can heal. But now he’s too overprotective of the ship and us, and I wonder if we gave him too much space,” Jongin shook his head.  
  
Well.  
  
If the Jongdae Sehun visited in the engine room with those beautiful smiles, those delightful chuckles, those wonderfully rosy cheeks flushed from the heat was a shadow of the self he was before whatever accident had occurred, then Sehun didn’t know how much more he could take because he was already overwhelmed, so overwhelmed and absolutely in awe of this Jongdae.  
  
The Jongdae he knew.  
  
The Jongdae he cared for.  
  
The Jongdae he l—  
  
“Time? Oh no it’s _time_ …I’m sorry Sehun I can’t take you to the engine room today, I’ve got to go,” Jongin frantically said as he glanced at the clock in the wall and ran out leaving Sehun stunned.  
  
Sehun supposed he should learn how to locate the engine room properly so he wouldn’t have to rely on Jongin, but the lower deck was like an ever-changing labyrinth, shifting passageways every time he tried to walk through it. Wandering around the odd rooms, Sehun didn’t know how much time had passed, so when the hour struck, the vibrations echoing through the ship, Sehun didn’t have time to think except run with his ears straining to catch the last echoes of the clock, with his heart straining to catch the last seconds of the day with Jongdae before he had to return.  
  
When he finally made it right in front of the golden door, he stood just as entranced as he was on the first day he saw it.  
  
And when he finally opened the door to see Jongdae who greeted him with a smile and beckoned him to come closer, closer, closer, he felt just as overwhelmed as he was on the first day he met him.  
  
“How are you today? Did the pirates scare you?” Jongdae asked as he handed Sehun a shovel.  
  
“I’m fine. Alive. How are you?” Sehun asked, remembering Jongin’s words about Jongdae.  
  
“Good,” Jongdae said, the ends of his lips straining just a little too much for Sehun’s liking.  
  
Jongdae continued to chatter on, talking to Sehun about how he wanted to take him to a mountain rest stop and show him around as soon as possible even though this ship sailed so slowly, how he’d show Sehun one day how to make a small automaton, how he was so glad Sehun was here.  
  
“You have soot on your face, Sehun,” Jongdae said, ceasing his brief anecdote about how Yifan swore one day to fly as close to the sun as he could in order to point at Sehun’s cheek.  
  
“Oh really? Is it gone now?” Sehun said, brushing the back of his hand against his face, but only succeeding in wiping more soot on it.  
  
“Here,” Jongdae said, pulling out a handkerchief from his back pocket, “Hold still.”  
  
Sehun obeyed Jongdae’s command too well, and he even held his breath as his heart beat faster and faster as Jongdae’s fingertips brushed lightly across his face and held his jaw into place as Jongdae’s other hand gently wiped the rest of the soot away with the handkerchief. Breathlessly, Sehun watched Jongdae concentrate on wiping his cheek clean until his eyes wandered to Sehun’s own gaze.  
  
“Thanks, Jongdae,” Sehun managed to say, not taking his eyes off of Jongdae.  
  
Jongdae appeared as if he wanted to say something more as he was leaning in, leaning closer to Sehun…until he thought twice and opted to tease Sehun instead.  
  
“If you make this much of a mess while doing this maybe you should just let me do all the work,” Jongdae shook his head.  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” Sehun pouted, “I’m really trying, you know.”  
  
“I _know_ , and thank you, Sehun. For everything,” Jongdae said, placing the dirtied handkerchief on the work bench, “You make everything easier by helping.”  
  
“I wish I could help _more_ , but I always get lost, Jongdae. The lower deck is so hard to navigate without anyone to help me, and I’m always wasting time running around finding this room when I could be spending more time with you here,” Sehun scowled.  
  
Jongdae looked torn between wanting to speak and refusing to speak, opening and closing his mouth a few times before he sighed.  
  
“There could have been a way to make it easier for you to find this room. To find me,” Jongdae finally said, causing Sehun to look up, excited at the prospect of making navigation easier.  
  
“Really? How?” Sehun eagerly asked.  
  
Jongdae sat on the workbench, swiftly swinging his legs over the side as he motioned for Sehun to join him.  
  
“It won’t work anymore, but there are clocks, twin pairs of stopwatches that light up brighter and brighter when they grow nearer to each other. You could have used one to check how close you were getting to me before changing your position if the watch dimmed,” Jongdae explained.  
  
“Oh that’s a great idea! But why won’t it work anymore?” Sehun asked.  
  
“Those pairs are rare, and I only have one left,” Jongdae said, hesitating before reaching into his shirt and pulling out a beautiful stopwatch dangling from a thin leather strap.  
  
“It’s beautiful, Jongdae,” Sehun said, gazing at the intricate circular patterns engraved onto the front of the stopwatch, “What happened to the other one? Who had it? Did you lose it?”  
  
But as soon as those questions left his mouth, Sehun regretted them instantly, as Jongdae closed his fingers around the stopwatch and gripped them tightly, his expression dancing on the edges of something so deeply desolate.  
  
“I lost it in an accident,” Jongdae admitted.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sehun said, sorry that Jongdae had to suffer losses, sorry that he brought up those memories by asking, sorry that he could not turn back time to prevent those tragic events Jongdae experienced from happening.  
  
“It’ll be okay,” Jongdae shook his head, choosing not to say any more, though the loud clicking noise of a gear popping from its place on the wall startled him.  
  
He immediately ran over to fix it, to push it back into place, to test and observe it to make sure nothing else malfunctioned before taking a deep breath…and another…and another before walking back to Sehun.  
  
“Are you okay? Did something happen with the engine?” Sehun carefully asked, looking concernedly at Jongdae, who was still taking deep breaths.  
  
“We almost…If I hadn’t caught that mistake…in a few days we would’ve fallen out of the sky,” Jongdae shakily said.  
  
“Oh. I _see_ ,” Sehun said, “Well. It’s good that you caught it quickly then. I wouldn’t care to meet the ground _that_ soon after I just got here. Especially like that.”  
  
Briefly, he wondered what it would’ve been like to experience falling out of the sky. Would it be a swift plummet down, down, down? Would it be a slow descent into the ground while flames burst around the ship? But surely Yifan would have emergency protocols or something, right? But surely there must be some other way to escape the possible –  
  
But Sehun ceased his discomforting thought for a moment, as he noticed Jongdae’s shaking hands and frantic, darting eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry…this is my fault,” Jongdae said, starting to breathe in and out faster and faster.  
  
Sehun immediately scooted closer to Jongdae in order to comfort him.  
  
“But it’s not your fault! You’re the one that fixed it after all!” Sehun said, attempting to calm Jongdae down. He spread his arms out, hovering them around Jongdae’s shoulders. Now it was his turn for his hands to shake, as he was not brave enough to touch Jongdae yet.  
  
“I could’ve let us all _die_. This is all my _fault_ ,” Jongdae said, horrified with what could have been.  
  
“But you _didn’t_ ,” Sehun shook his head. His hands and arms ached and urged to rest soothingly upon Jongdae’s bare shoulders, and he longed to hold Jongdae close and comfort him without words, but he was not sure, he was not sure if –  
  
“I did,” Jongdae raised a shaking hand to cover his mouth.  
  
‘I _did_ ,” Jongdae repeated, and even though Sehun didn’t know quite what Jongdae was talking about because no one was dead currently, that was it. That was when Sehun decided enough was enough.  
  
“Hey… _hey_. But we’re alright though. That was just a tiny bump in the engine that you fixed easily and quickly. We’re still flying high above all the clouds and the cities below. We’re still up here, alright? We’re still alive, alright? We haven’t fallen out of the sky yet, alright?” Sehun said, trying to comfort Jongdae as best as he could. And finally he carefully placed his hands on Jongdae’s shoulders and rubbed them as soothingly as possible.  
  
Jongdae fell silent, his breathing beginning to slow down after a while, but his heart was still beating so fast, and though before it was due to his panic, now it was for a different reason. A different, more beautiful, magnificent reason that made Jongdae’s heart squeeze with devastatingly overwhelming feelings.  
  
At the same time, Sehun focused on rubbing Jongdae’s shoulders slowly, thinking of more ways to make Jongdae feel better. What would be a safe topic to talk about? That wouldn’t spark some unwanted sadness or emotions?  
  
“How did you even learn how to fly an airship anyways? Did you have to pass some test? Or was it your engineering background? I don’t know…I just think it’s so amazing that you can fly an airship so well,” Sehun rambled on, causing a slight smile to appear on Jongdae’s lips.  
  
“I was the first,” Jongdae said after a pause, “I was the first person to ever work in an engine room of an airship and keep it from falling out of the sky.”  
  
“Wow,” Sehun gaped at Jongdae, so in awe of this man, this intelligent engineer, this radiant s—.  
  
_Wow_.  
  
Sehun immediately asked Jongdae more about what it was _like_ …was he scared the first time he rode an airship? Was he ever afraid it would fall to the ground? Jongdae merely looked at Sehun fondly, letting him finish his excited ramblings before answering that of _course_ he had been afraid the first time he flew on an airship. Of course he was afraid it would fall to the ground.  
  
Of course he was afraid.  
  
But when Sehun brought up the military, asked him if he was the one that taught the military how to fly their own weaponized airships, Jongdae’s expression tightened again.  
  
So that was when Sehun decided it was best to change conversations, but not before letting out a loud yawn.  
  
“It’s getting late, Sehun,” Jongdae began to say as Sehun suppressed another yawn, “Are you going to bed soon?”  
  
“No, I’d rather stay here with you,” Sehun said honestly. Exhaustion was beginning to set in, and the exhaustion made him brave, jabbering on and on, “How late do you even stay here anyways? Can’t I stay here with you? My roommate’s gone all the time, and it gets lonely…”  
  
“Oh my god,” Jongdae began to say, “Sehun…what does your room look like?”  
  
“My room? It has a single circular window in the middle with a windowsill so you can sit on it, two beds, and a missing roommate that I’ve been dying to meet. But I don’t care anymore because I rather ditch whoever he is for you,” Sehun sleepily said, his eyes beginning to flutter from fatigue.  
  
“Oh my _god_ …You’re my roommate? I think it’s me. I’m so sorry…I didn’t know that was you in my room! I thought it was another random guest we’ve been having and no one told me about,” Jongdae laughed.  
  
With that, Sehun snapped wide-awake.  
  
No way.  
  
No fucking _way_.  
  
All this time Sehun had been dreaming of meeting his roommate, only to find out now that he was here this whole time, that he had already been unknowingly sleeping next to Jongdae for some time, that his roommate was Jongdae?  
  
_Jongdae_.  
  
“What the _fuck_ , Jongdae…You’ve been leaving me alone all this time, and I’ll have you _know_ sometimes I can hear Yifan’s snoring down the hall somewhere and it’s very unpleasant to sit through alone,” Sehun pouted, the realization still pounding through his head.  
  
Jongdae was his _roommate_.  
  
“I’m sorry!” Jongdae cracked a smile, raising his hands up in apology, “I work at odd hours, too, so I’ve snuck in for quick naps, but you’re always sleeping with the lights off!”  
  
“I _tried_ a few times to see what my roommate looked like…what you looked like, but it didn’t work out,” Sehun shook his head. Jongdae was his roommate this whole time. He couldn’t _believe_.  
  
“Then that was you I dragged to bed all that time ago? I was wondering what you were doing on the floor,” Jongdae laughed.  
  
“Waiting. I was waiting for you,” Sehun sulked.  
  
“Aw don’t be like that,” Jongdae said, tilting Sehun’s downcast chin up with a finger.  
  
“Then you have to sleep with me,” Sehun said before his eyes widened and he tried to amend his statement, “Go to _bed_ next to me. Since you’re my roommate.”  
  
“I have to watch the ship,” Jongdae said, though his cheeks burned at Sehun’s suggestion.  
  
“Listen, Jongdae. You told me that the ship could fly properly unattended for a day, right?” Sehun folded his arms around his chest.  
  
“Yeah?” Jongdae nodded slowly.  
  
“Then you can spare a couple more hours of sleep in our room away from this. You need a good, proper night of rest, and you need to stop _worrying_ ,” Sehun said.  
  
“But what happens if the ship falls out of the sky when I’m not there? I can’t let anything happen to you or the others on the ship,” Jongdae shook his head.  
  
“You have to take that risk then. You just have to hope that you’ve done enough to keep it running so you can let go and live properly without worrying about it all the time,” Sehun said.  
  
“I don’t know if I’ve done enough,” Jongdae protested.  
  
“I believe you’ve done more than enough,” Sehun said, the reflections of the fire from the furnace dancing in his eyes, “So come with me. Come with me, Jongdae. Let go of the ship a little, let go of some of your worries, let go and _live_.”  
  
Jongdae absent-mindedly picked up a chain on the bench beside them and fiddled with it silently as he paused to think of Sehun's words. Sehun waited long enough before he held out his hand, waiting Jongdae to come with him.  
  
So Jongdae put down the chain and let go.  
  
“Okay,” Jongdae finally said.  
  
_Okay_.  
  
That night, Sehun couldn’t believe it, but there was Jongdae his roommate lying in bed, attempting to sleep, attempting to take his mind off the ship and just relax. Before Sehun closed his eyes to sleep, he turned his head over to squint at Jongdae’s dark silhouette to make sure that he was still there, that he was real, that this wasn’t a dream.  
  
And that night, Sehun dreamt of golden smiles, fluttering wings, and Jongdae, Jongdae, _Jongdae_.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Over time, life smoothed out into a comfortable rhythm, a reliable schedule of waking up next to Jongdae often, eating with the others, and then heading down to the engine room where Jongdae already ran off to after waking.  
  
Oftentimes Sehun would wake to empty sheets beside him, but he was more okay with it now because he knew Jongdae had been there, had taken the time to be brave and let go of the ship for a while to sleep for himself.  
  
And Sehun was proud of him for that.  
  
But the thing about the comfortable, rhythmic schedules he found himself living in was that he often used the time he didn’t have to waste wondering what he was going to do next to instead spend thinking about what he wanted.  
  
And Sehun wanted Jongdae.  
  
He wanted more smiles with Jongdae, more laughter with Jongdae, more time with Jongdae, and he disliked the clocks on the ship, hated the fast-paced, linear time that was always pressing him on…on…onwards to a different task when all he wanted to do was spend more time with Jongdae and steal the seconds between stricken hours with him.  
  
But the stolen seconds and moments that Sehun and Jongdae did manage to seize for themselves were spent wonderfully.  
  
Jongdae often showed him other things he created or modified like this one clockwork bird he bought from a mountain city that he modified to sing different songs whenever the hour struck. When the following hour chimed, Jongdae sang along with the bird, and Sehun found himself fondly thinking that birds wished they could sing as sweetly as Jongdae could sing.  
  
One other night, Jongdae had explained to Sehun the mechanisms of the giant, winged clock in the corner of the engine room after Sehun had complained about being startled by its loud, irrevocable chimes on the hour.  
  
“Look, Sehun! This is the only time you can rip off the clock’s wings,” Jongdae smiled, leaping from his seat to catch time’s fluttering wings between his hands before gently twisting them and removing them from the clock, “Come try the other!”  
  
Curious, Sehun leapt from the bench as Jongdae urged him to hurry before the last tolls of the clock ended and ripped off time’s wing before the final chimes of the clock ended.  
  
“Can you only put them back on the hour, too?” Sehun asked as he clutched the shimmering wing in his hand.  
  
“Be careful holding that, Sehun. The end of the wing is so sharp that I’m sure it could stab someone if you tried hard enough,” Jongdae said, “But yes! We can just put the wings back on the next hour.”  
  
But the two of them had opted to sit on the bench and talk and talk and talk, and when the next hour came, neither of them noticed.  
  
And that night, while time still flew by as they enjoyed each others’ presences, far too caught up in the moment, themselves, life to go to bed, time’s disabled wings lay still on the bench between them.  
  
But of course, not all nights ended up with them too immersed with each other in the engine room to remember it was time to sleep.  
  
Other nights like this night, Sehun was still attempting to persuade Jongdae to come outside and eat with the others. 

While Jongdae had increasingly been sleeping in his own room more now, he still preferred to eat away from everyone whenever he could remember to find the time to run to the kitchen to grab whatever leftovers Luhan left for him on the table.  
  
So this night, Sehun was determined to persuade Jongdae to leave the engine room and eat with everyone.  
  
“Come outside with me, Jongdae. When was the last time you went outside? We’re eating on the deck tonight!” Sehun asked.  
  
“Before…Before the accident,” Jongdae said, and though Sehun still did not know what Jongdae was referring to, he still wanted to help Jongdae let go a little more.  
  
“I’m still so sorry that happened to you, but you can’t keep _blaming_ yourself for it. You can’t just keep living inside this room worrying that the ship’s going to fall out of the sky any second without you there because it _won’t_. It can survive a while without you, too, you know? Take a break. Come with me. Luhan said he was cooking something good tonight anyways to eat on the deck,” Sehun solemnly said, reaching out a hand. He still didn’t know what happened to Jongdae, what unfortunate accident left him so afraid, but it was okay. What he did want to know was if Jongdae wanted to try and be braver today.  
  
Jongdae hesitated and looked back for a moment at the mechanical security of the clicking gears, the ticking clock, let the warmth of the furnace fan at his cheeks, watched the steam from the pipes snake around the air, and sighed. The ship would be alright for a while if he wasn’t there to watch it, right? It wouldn’t fall out of the sky if he just took a longer break, right? No one would die this time if he let himself be free for a night, right?  
  
Right?  
  
Sighing, Jongdae reached out to take Sehun’s hand, his own trembling a little, and took a step forward. And another. And another. And another until they were both walking hand in hand side by side out of that engine room, that gleaming door, and closing that gilded doorknob behind them. Silently, Jongdae lead them out to the top deck and gasped when a blast of cold air hit them.  
  
“Come on!” Sehun smiled, finally able to lead the way now that they were climbing out of the lower deck and onto the upper deck in front of the vast, open night sky dotted with twinkling stars and wispy clouds.  
  
Jongdae did not think he was brave enough to face leaving the ship’s engines and mechanics unattended for more than a few hours at night while he slept after what had happened a year ago.  
  
But here was Sehun gently pulling him forward into the moonlight, into the open air, and when Jongdae saw the beauty of the radiant night sky in front of him, he laughed. The stars seemed to glow brighter and sparkle harder in that moment. Just for Jongdae. He had missed them.  
  
“Jongdae?” a voice shouted across the deck.  
  
“Oh my god…Jongdae! You’re finally joining us?” shouted another.  
  
“I love you Jongdae! We’re glad you’re here!” ecstatically screeched another.  
  
Jongdae turned his head away from the stars to see Jongin’s shadow jumping up and down excitedly while Yifan and Luhan waved. He had missed them.  
  
Jongdae ran across the deck, spreading his arms wide to hug them. It was a pity he had only two arms, but at least all of them somehow managed to fit in his embrace anyways.  
  
He missed seeing them for more than brief moments when he allowed himself to take a break.  
  
He missed laughing with them, smiling with them before what had happened.  
  
He missed living.  
  
Jongdae missed living…living like the way he wanted to without fear of falling, without the knowledge that the dead could never come back, without fear of himself.  
  
And, turning his neck, he remembered the man who had gently and patiently helped him try to live again.  
  
Sehun.  
  
Jongdae reached out a hand to Sehun who smiled more brilliantly than the moon above, and gestured for him to come join them, too.  
  
“Thank you for bringing Jongdae out of hiding, Sehun,” Yifan said as he clapped Sehun’s shoulder appreciatively.  
  
“I just wanted him to take a break with everyone. That’s all,” Sehun nodded.  
  
“You did good,” Luhan smiled.  
  
“Thanks,” Sehun said, smiling back and feeling warm inside.  
  
“Jongdae you _have_ to try the roast that Luhan made tonight! Come, have a seat and let’s eat!” Jongin said, eagerly looping Jongdae’s arm in his and leading him towards the table.  
  
Laughing, Jongdae allowed himself to be pushed to the table while Luhan piled his plate with food.  
  
“Come on, Sehun…sit down with me, too. Don’t be shy,” Jongdae said, grateful that Sehun had persuaded him to come outside.  
  
“This one? Shy?” Yifan said, pointing at Sehun, “That’s so funny Jongdae. You should’ve seen him mouthing off the first day we found him on board.”  
  
With that, everyone had laughed and smiled and ate together just like the old times. Almost like the old times.  
  
But Jongdae still lived with the regret that lingered, and as he smiled between jokes and bits of the food, while he was content, he still could not chase the wispy ghosts of the tragedy that haunted him completely. Yet.  
  
Time had a cruel way of passing. It passed slowly when nothing pleasant or nothing at all happened, and passed too quickly when things were too enjoyable it was easy to forget this was living and not just surviving. It was terrifying to realize that suddenly ninety years could have passed by in the blink of an eye…a whole lifetime done in what seemed like seconds.  
  
Here, all those hours on the deck passed by too quickly, and after Yifan had pulled out some alcohol, Jongdae quickly dragged his chair to the railings of the ship by himself. It was not that he had no desire to drink, not that he didn’t want to sing and dance rowdily with them with hazy minds and slurred songs. But he simply wished to forcibly slow down time and hold onto the precious seconds of life’s good moments before they tumbled and fell out of his grasp.  
  
With a heavy heart, Jongdae folded his arms on top of the railing, rested his head on top of them, and stared below. The night air was crisp, the wind from the slow cruising lightly tousled his hair, and everything was peaceful.  
  
But a loud screeching sound had echoed through the deck, punctuated by a silence that quickly followed. Suddenly a chair was placed beside him before its owner slid into its seat.  
  
Sehun.  
  
Suddenly Jongdae felt relieved…so relieved that it was him…that he wasn’t alone anymore.  
  
“What are you looking at?” Sehun asked curiously.  
  
“The stars,” Jongdae smiled wistfully as he continued to look downwards, down at the glimmering city lights below.  
  
“Okay. I’ll look with you,” Sehun offered, leaning on the railing to look at the city below. He did not understand what Jongdae saw down below, as the stars were up there, twinkling as they looked upon them all, but he was willing to try to see what Jongdae saw. But memories drifted back to him like the smoke and the ashes of the city that he hated so much, so he tore his gaze away from the sights underneath them and looked at Jongdae instead.  
  
“I love the stars, Sehun,” Jongdae sighed.  
  
“Me, too,” Sehun absent-mindedly said, too busy admiring and fondly tracing the deep curve of Jongdae’s cheekbones before resting his gaze on Jongdae’s beautiful lips. One day he swore when he was brave enough to do so, Sehun was going to kiss all the fucking starlights out of Jongdae.

When Sehun awoke the next morning, he was only slightly disappointed to see an empty bed next to him, but he didn’t have time to dwell too much upon it because a deafening _boom_ echoed as the ship rocked a little too violently for Sehun’s liking.  
  
Ah.  
  
Pirates in the morning?  
  
Already?  
  
Sehun yawned, taking the time to stretch before he opened the door to see a sleepy Jongin leaning onto the doorframe for support.  
  
“Time…It’s time to fight, Sehun,” he yawned before drowsily guiding Sehun to the armory room.  
  
Today, Jongin seemed more tired, loading and reloading the canon not as quickly as he had been able to do before. Sehun was able to keep up with him, and today, they matched each other’s pace, the adrenaline from the danger pushing them out of the fragments of their slumber.  
  
Today, an explosion rocked the ship more violently than Sehun was used to, causing him and Jongin to drop to the floor as they lost their balance. But Sehun never expected them to fall out of the sky. That never happened. That could not happen. That would not happen because he trusted Jongdae to keep them alive.  
  
Today, Sehun was worried about Jongdae, worried not that Jongdae wouldn’t be able to keep the ship sailing, but rather worried that Jongdae was panicking, anxiously trying to suppress his fear of the situation, his fear of failing to save the ship, his fear of himself.  
  
But at lunch after the pirates faded from the skyline, left behind in shimmering dust, Jongdae walked in with soot smudged on rosy cheeks whistling a meandering tune.  
  
“Are you okay?” Sehun asked, leaving his chair abruptly to check on him. He cupped Jongdae’s cheeks with his hands and stared at him intently, relieved to find no visible bruises or cuts on his face.  
  
“I’m fine, Sehun. Are you hurt anywhere?” Jongdae replied as he placed his hands on top of Sehun’s.  
  
“I’m fine. Everyone else is fine. Is the ship okay?” Sehun asked.  
  
“No,” Jongdae took in a deep breath, but smiled optimistically, “But there’s nothing I can do about it while we’re flying, so we’ll have to land.”  
  
“Are you going to be okay? About that?” Sehun asked, prepared to try and single-handedly land this whole ship himself right now, right here if Jongdae was not comfortable with the ship being in such a state. Even if he didn’t even know how to land a ship. Even if he didn’t want to land.  
  
“I’ll be okay. The ship can last for about a day more anyways, and we don’t need that long,” Jongdae bravely nodded.  
  
Sehun smiled, pleasantly proud to find Jongdae slowly coming to peace with the things he could not do. Even if he already could do so much. Even if he already did so much.  
  
“We’re landing in a couple of hours at a mountain rest stop anyways. Don’t worry,” Yifan called from the table.  
  
After lunch, this time, since there was nothing else Jongdae could do given the ship’s state, he stayed with Sehun on the top deck. But instead of shoveling coal like they were used to, they swabbed the deck together.  
  
“Do you ever miss the city below there?” Sehun suddenly asked.  
  
“Yeah. Sometimes too much,” Jongdae said, “I know you don’t, but don’t worry. Mountains are nothing like cities at all. You’ll see.”  
  
“I’ve never been to a mountain before. Except that one time I took a train to one briefly so I could sneak on here,” Sehun offered a wry smile.  
  
“You never told me why you escaped up here,” Jongdae said after a while.  
  
Sehun stopped cleaning to think.  
  
“You never told me why you’re afraid of flying this ship,” he countered.  
  
But suddenly the ship lurched, and Sehun stumbled against the railings while Jongdae grabbed his arm to steady him.  
  
“What’s happening?” Sehun asked, seeing the ground become steadily closer and closer. Surely… _surely_ they could not be falling, right? Jongdae said that the ship had a day left…and only a few hours had passed.  
  
Surely he would not –  
  
“Relax, Sehun. We’re landing on the mountain!” Jongdae smiled, nudging Sehun to take a look at the sights approaching.  
  
Sure enough, a large mountain with deep crevices loomed in the distance, mist and clouds swirling around the peaks of the ancient, eroded rock.  
  
It was the first time Sehun had experienced an airship landing, and it was a little rough despite Yifan attempting to land them smoothly. As soon as the gangway was lowered, Luhan ran towards the ground he missed with absolute relief while Jongin hoisted down the anchor for him to secure in order to prevent the ship from floating away.  
  
“Come on!” Jongdae said, pulling Sehun with him down off the ship, “I have to show you so many things! I’m sure you’ll love it!”  
  
“Yeah…hopefully,” Sehun said, a bit distressed he was close to the ground. _Closer_ to the ground. Luhan could send him off at any moment, and Sehun could be on his way down back to the city any time.  
  
But Jongdae’s excitement was so infectious, so Sehun found himself grinning as he allowed Jongdae to drag him forwards into the mountain rest stop while Yifan yelled at them to meet back for dinner at some time, some hour that Sehun immediately forgot.  
  
The two of them weaved in and out of tents and canopies and booths full of people selling things while steam snaked around the area. Jongdae finally slowed down, excited to not be on the ship with his responsibilities, and immediately pulled Sehun in front of the nearest booth. One vendor was looking at them curiously through multi-lensed goggles while adjusting her velvet top hat.  
  
“Look, Sehun,” Jongdae said, carefully plucking out something from the bin of the assorted items.  
  
Sehun peered closely at what Jongdae held in his hand, and smiled when Jongdae opened his palms to reveal a little clockwork dragon that spat tiny flames out as its miniature gears turned and clicked.  
  
“Do you like it?” the seller beamed, “I think I have another one that matches for the two of you.”  
  
“Do you want one? I’ll buy you it,” Jongdae fondly said, nudging Sehun’s arm with his elbow.  
  
“Let’s keep looking first,” Sehun said, feeling brave enough to loop his hand through Jongdae’s…very nice arms, “What else did you want to show me?”  
  
Jongdae gently placed the dragon back where it belonged, thanked the woman who told them to come back anytime, and looped his arm tighter around Sehun’s before pointing towards the ceiling and explaining that people had carved large holes into the mountain’s top so air could circulate through and so the steam would be able to rise out.  
  
“What happens when it rains?” Sehun asked, moving out of the way as a few clockwork birds flew towards him, chased by a laughing child.  
  
“Then it just rains,” Jongdae shrugged, “The people here would just bring out umbrellas or close up shop.”  
  
“Do people really live here on the mountains?” Sehun asked, stopping to glance at a vendor’s collection of glowing rocks.  
  
“In larger mountain communities and cities, yes. But in smaller places like these rest stops, most people just commute from…cities down there,” Jongdae carefully said.  
  
“Lucky them,” Sehun said, taking one last look at the glowing lights before looking away.  
  
Jongdae must have noticed Sehun's expression in time and quickly led them to an adjacent booth that sold various baubles and trinkets.  
  
“Do you want to try these kaleidoscopes?” the vendor asked after waving at the two of them with her metal arm.  
  
“Kaleidoscopes?” Sehun asked, intrigued by her gleaming prosthetic.  
  
“Yeah, look! Every person looks into the same lens, but sees different things. What will you see?” the vendor asked, passing the kaleidoscope to Jongdae who picked it up curiously.  
  
Without saying anything else, he looked into the lens of the kaleidoscope and saw.  
  
He saw the chains of his past swirling in the colored patterns of the wreckage, shining keys dangling right before his reach, lemon scones tumbling from his grasp, burning suns radiating such bright light he could not look away even though it hurt.  
  
And he saw Sehun.  
  
Splendid.  
  
Stunning.  
  
Sehun.  
  
“What did you see?” Sehun asked as Jongdae passed him the kaleidoscope.  
  
“Stars,” Jongdae said, his chest feeling tight with devastatingly beautiful emotions.  
  
Without saying anything else, Sehun looked into the lens of the kaleidoscope and saw.  
  
He saw the hopes of his future emerging in the speckled reflections above the smoke, rosy cheeks flushing as a downpour of ticket stubs rained from the skies, golden doorknobs erupting into shining dust, glittering galaxies spiraling so close to him that he could touch them if he just reached out.  
  
And he saw Jongdae.  
  
Jovial.  
  
Jovian.  
  
Jongdae.  
  
“What did you see?” Jongdae asked as Sehun lifted the kaleidoscope away from his gaze and returned it to the vendor.  
  
“Something wonderful…of the most beautiful, boldest, brightest sort,” Sehun said, his heart feeling like it could burst any moment from all the overwhelming sentiments he felt.  
  
After that, the two of them fell into a deep silence, appreciating each other’s company as they continued walking around the booths.  
  
One vendor advertised a rare compass that could point anyone exactly where they desired to go no matter where they were. Sehun broke the silence to joke, elbowing Jongdae lightly as he said it would be helpful to use one to lead him to the engine room. Jongdae merely nodded, the weight of his own stopwatch that dangled from his neck and rested near his heart feeling heavier than usual.  
  
When it was time for a quick meal, Jongdae pointed Sehun towards the seating area while he promised he’d come back with food.  
  
“I’d rather buy you the food, Jongdae,” Sehun shook his head.  
  
“No, I insist!” Jongdae smiled before adding, “Also…with what money?”  
  
Oh.  
  
True.  
  
_Damn_.  
  
“Fine…one day I’ll be able to buy you all the food you want to eat, Jongdae. All for you,” Sehun scowled.  
  
“Go find us a place to sit, okay?” was Jongdae’s only response before he waved and disappeared into the steam that billowed from the nearby pipes.  
  
Sehun curiously wandered into where he hoped was the seating area, looking past curious gazes for an empty table. He passed by people with their eyes hidden by big, brass goggles or an eye patch, people talking over steaming bowls of something that smelled delightful, people bent over parts and pieces of metal as they repaired a giant clock.  
  
Eventually Sehun found a table in the back with just a woman sitting who was finishing the last bits of her food.  
  
“You look a bit overwhelmed, love,” She said kindly as he saw him approach slowly, “Is it your first time up here?”  
  
“Kind of,” Sehun said, sliding in to sit, “I’ve only been flying for a couple of months.”  
  
“Ah…I’ve never flown, but I come here from the city to work,” The woman said.  
  
“Really?” Sehun’s eyes lit up, “Is it hard to find work up here?”  
  
“A little. Sometimes shopkeepers would rather buy or make automatons to take their place when they’re busy, but it’s either this or factory work for me,” the woman said.  
  
“That’s the problem with the city,” Sehun disappointedly said.  
  
“It’s not at all that bad. There are some parts of the city safe away from the smoke of the factories and work houses,” the woman said.  
  
“I’ve only ever known the work houses my whole life until now,” Sehun said before trying to not sound as bitter as he felt, “But that’s nice.”  
  
“You’re so happy up here, right?” she smiled, “It’s a whole new territory to explore…So open…wonderfully open and temptingly free that the queen’s grandson ran off to fly one of those big ships just like the military’s. No one’s heard of him ever since, and there’s a ransom out for him and something…some sculpture or painting or something he took with him, but people only ever listen to the second part because money’s involved. Lots of money.”  
  
“I think I would run away like that, too,” Sehun sighed, feeling fortunate he could be here.  
  
“But eventually you’ll have to come back down. Right?” the woman finally said before leaving.  
  
Sehun frowned. No way. He would not mind it as much if he returned to Jongdae’s city he was so fond of, but not he city he knew. Not the smoky city he choked in. Not the ashy city he almost burned in.  
  
“Is everything okay?” a voice concernedly asked as steaming bowls of soup were placed in front of Sehun.  
  
_Jongdae_.  
  
Sehun nodded, relieved Jongdae was here as he thanked him for the food before he took a sip of the hot soup. Immediately, the soup filled him up, the warmth spreading across his chest as he felt increasingly content, just simply content sitting here with Jongdae a thousand miles up in the sky. He was so focused with savoring how delicious and how satisfying the soup tasted that he never realized how fondly Jongdae gazed at him as he silently ate.  
  
In that moment, these times that felt like hours or longer were compressed into minutes…fleeting seconds. And if time could slow down for these moments spent living and laughing and loving, then they could be brave enough to face the future hours, the ticking minutes, the fading seconds of whatever time was left.  
  
After eating, Sehun accompanied Jongdae to buy the gears they needed to repair the ship and other parts, but when they approached the ship to store them, trouble appeared within moments.  
  
“What?” Sehun asked when Jongdae suddenly stopped in his tracks and reached a hand out to push Sehun behind him.  
  
Jongdae simply shook his head and pointed in front of them.  
  
In front of where their ship was docked, Yifan was busy dealing with a group of women who were attempting to board his ship, waving his arms around animatedly as he argued. Unlike his normally relaxed self, Yifan stood tall, folding his arms together as he tensely reasoned with them until one of them pushed past him and boarded the ship.  
  
“Stay here,” Jongdae said as he walked rapidly towards them.  
  
But Sehun followed.  
  
“I’m here with you,” he argued.  
  
“Fine. Stay behind me,” Jongdae relented after Sehun showed no signs of obeying.  
  
“Is everything alright?” Jongdae asked when they approached the group.  
  
“These people claim to be a part of a royal investigative service carrying out random ship checks that are under suspicion of pirating goods,” Yifan quickly explained, “But they can’t because they don’t have a legitimate warrant.”  
  
While Jongdae jumped into the argument, Sehun peeked out over Jongdae’s shoulders and observed the young women with their calloused hands, slightly frayed clothing, and scars on their skin.  
  
Strange.  
  
“You have no rights to search us, so get your people off my ship, and get out of here before you regret this,” Yifan said, lightly placing his hand on a pistol he carried upon his hip.  
  
The main official looked at Yifan, noticed his set jaw and unwillingness to let this search occur, and whistled before shooting her own pistol three times in the air before anyone could blink.  
  
“Don’t worry, they’re blanks,” she sneered as the lone girl ran out of their ship at the signal. Jongdae gripped Sehun’s arm to make sure he had not been startled too badly, that those really were blanks that the woman shot, that Sehun was not hurt.  
  
Fighting pirates in the air was something Sehun had unfortunately been accustomed to, but these people, whoever they were, unsettled him. But the presence of Jongdae’s hand gripping him so tightly and the close proximity between them gave him the strength to calm down and take a few deep breaths.  
  
“Watch yourself. We’ll be on the lookout for you,” the head official said as she pushed past them, her crew trailing closely behind.  
  
“Does that normally happen?” Sehun managed to ask, his fingers only trembling slightly. Just a little.  
  
“I’ve never heard of that particular division. Either it’s new, unregulated, or _fake_ ,” Yifan shook his head, still surveying the area around them in case they were to come back.  
  
“It looks like they didn’t take anything at least,” Jongdae said. Yifan said nothing, but merely shifted uncomfortably.  
  
“Well I mean…if they want the weird, dangerous stuff this ship has, then they should probably take it. They can have all the toxic pink bubbles they want,” Sehun said.  
  
“I don’t trust them. I’ll stay down there with Luhan since he’s more comfortable there and observe the situation, but would you two mind staying on deck and watching the ship while we’re gone?” Yifan asked.  
  
“Of course,” Sehun nodded. Yifan clapped them on their shoulders and promised he’d return later.  
  
“I wish I could show you more of the place, but –“ Jongdae began to say.  
  
“It’s good enough. It’s more than enough. Thank you, Jongdae. There will be more opportunities, more chances for you to show me around,” Sehun smiled, “as long as Luhan doesn’t secretly drag me off back down there when nobody’s looking.  
  
“Luhan is just concerned. And paranoid…for safety reasons,” Jongdae tried to explain, “He’s not very welcoming or trusting of newer people.”  
  
“Why?” Sehun asked.  
  
“Maybe you’ll find out,” Jongdae shrugged.  
  
“Come _on_ ,” Sehun pouted, “Can’t you tell me? There’s so many things I don’t know.”  
  
“But you already know so much,” Jongdae protested, “It’ll be okay if you find this out some other time.”  
  
“Like what?” Sehun hopefully asked, used to the gray faces of his work supervisors from the city screaming at him that he didn’t know better, he didn’t know much at all so he should just shut up and get back to work.  
  
“You know how to make everyone smile, how to be patient when people are being difficult, how to do things you only learned seconds ago. You know so much, Sehun. And you know how to live,” Jongdae fervently said.  
  
How to live?  
  
Sehun hoped Jongdae didn’t misread living as surviving. Because surviving was exhausting.  
  
Wake. Breathe. Work. Eat. Survive.  
  
Sehun was so used to fighting and working every day for the simple ability to eat, to drink, and even to breathe in the midst of the ashy smoke down below so it had become second nature for him.  
  
This was surviving.  
  
But when he was up here on this ship, breathing in the clean, fresh air and feeling so happy he might cry while watching the beautiful sights around him, this was something else. When he'd feel his stomach seize up uncontrollably after laughing so hard with Jongdae and his heart swell up with so much affection that he was afraid it was going to burst out of his chest every time he looked at Jongdae, this was it.  
  
This was living.  
  
But he was struck with a realization when he looked at Jongdae, scared Jongdae, who trembled as he battled himself every day, who tried to reassure himself that this ship would not go down, this ship could not fall out of the sky so no one would die today.  
  
“Then you must know how to live too…live even better and bolder,” was Sehun’s only awed reply.  
  
That was all he could say.  
  
And Jongdae fell…lost in his thoughts as he gazed at Sehun as if he was too beautiful, too bright to look at before he tore his eyes away from him and stared at the city lights flickering in the darkness below them.  
  
“What are you looking at?” Sehun asked after a while, but he felt that he already knew the answer.  
  
“The stars,” Jongdae said, pointing at his beautiful, sparkling lights below.  
  
“Okay,” Sehun absent-mindedly said, busy tracing the constellation of moles on Jongdae’s moonlit skin with his gaze.  
  
He refused to look at the stars Jongdae saw in the city below, but that did not mean he did not see or have his own mesmerizing sights to see, too.

 

 

  

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
While the days they spent docked at the cloudy rest stop waiting for Jongdae to repair the ship had been mostly uneventful and mostly not dangerous, trouble had followed them from the mountain.  
  
On the first day after leaving the rest stop, Yifan noticed the looming, dark shapes hiding behind the clouds out of the window while he was painting and put down his tube of bright yellow paint before assembling the others and ordering them to be alert and ready in case anything happened.  
  
But when he went looking for them, he found his crew perplexed with another stowaway situation that had arisen.  
  
“How did it get onboard?” Luhan said, ready to fight if needed.  
  
“Maybe it got lost and accidentally wandered here when we were at the rest stop,” Sehun said.  
  
“Can we keep it?” Jongin said hopefully.  
  
“These guys all have different purposes. What’s this one’s?” Jongdae asked, studying it with a glance of an eye.  
  
“When did we get an automaton?” Yifan said, entering the conversation as he studied the automaton. It was about as tall as Jongin with rusty gears clicking throughout its copper body, big yellow eyes that surveyed the situation wildly, and a variety of stopwatches hung from its belt. Odd.  
  
“The time! It’s time to see. Look. Find,” The automaton said, pointing in some vague direction before it mechanically walked off, the stopwatches jostling with every step it took.  
  
“Jongdae, how do you dismantle automatons in case they turn rogue,” Luhan said, staring suspiciously at the automaton’s back.  
  
“There’s a circuit in the back of their neck that you can rip out if you don’t have anything to cut it with,” Jongdae said.  
  
“Don’t hurt it! Look, it seems harmless,” Jongin shook his head.  
  
But the automaton had begun to wander to the stairs leading to the lower deck, and when no one moved to stop it, it wrenched open the door with its arms and disappeared downstairs. No one would see it again. For a while at least.  
  
But that was the least of their worries now, as everyone swore they could see shadows trailing after them in the dark clouds.  
  
On the second day after leaving the rest stop, Jongin took his naps in the armory room, ready to wake up and fight at any moment’s notice in case he would need to fire some cannonballs immediately.  
  
On the third day after leaving the rest stop, Luhan felt tense, and as he sharpened all his blades in the kitchen in between cutting up vegetables for the stew he was cooking, he briefly wondered if he would need to use his cutlery for purposes other than cooking in the near future.  
  
On the fourth day, Sehun was busy polishing the clock’s glimmering wings on the wall of the engine room while Jongdae was working on forging something in the furnace when trouble started.  
  
As it happened, the young women from the rest stop were actually a band of pirates who had most likely come to loot their ship after scouting it out the other day, and Sehun wished he could say he was prepared for it, but he really _wasn’t_.  
  
With a bang, the door of the engine room slammed open, and pirates swarmed inside the room before Sehun could even blink.  
  
While Jongdae reached out to pull a red-hot poker stick from the furnace to keep the pirates at bay, Sehun was less lucky, as one of the taller pirates had forcefully pushed his neck downwards into a chokehold.  
  
“Put the stick down or your friend gets it,” the pirate ordered, waving her pistol around as she spoke. It most definitely didn’t look like the safety was on.  
  
Jongdae glanced concernedly at Sehun struggling to breathe as he clawed futilely at the pirate’s strong grip and observed how many pirates there were…five. Doable. Fightable. But at what cost? At what cost to Sehun?  
  
“Alright, _alright_ …Just ease up on him,” Jongdae yelled, carefully putting down the metal rod to raise his hands slowly before being swept up by the other pirates and shoved out the door.  
  
“Are you okay?” Jongdae asked worriedly to Sehun who merely nodded as he fought to catch his breath.  
  
Sehun thought…no, he was _offended_ that the pirates managed to navigate them out of the lower deck too quickly because he lived here longer and still had problems finding everything. But that was the least of his worries, as when they burst through the top deck, they found Yifan, Luhan, and Jongin tightly secured to the giant mast in the middle of the ship while more pirates loomed above and taunted them.  
  
“We got ‘em, Heize,” the pirate holding Jongdae announced as they walked into view.  
  
“Good. That’s all the members of your crew, right?” Heize asked Yifan, who merely shrugged. Today, he wore his long, ridiculously purple wig that looked even more ridiculous when compared to Heize’s soft, dyed purple hair, and Sehun had to admire how Yifan tried to nonchalantly shrug as the wind kept whipping the wig in his face.  
  
“She _said_ ,” another pirate yelled as she kicked Yifan to make them tell the truth, “That’s the last of your crew, right?”  
  
“Hey,” Luhan yelled as the pirate snapped her attention to him, “Leave him alone!”  
  
“So touching…Friendship,” another pirate said, pretending to wipe a tear from her eye.  
  
“ _Weak_ ,” another pirate said as she kicked Luhan’s jaw before he reeled over, groaning from the pain.  
  
“That’s it! That’s everyone! Just don’t hurt them _please_ ,” Jongin screamed, struggling against his bonds frantically.  
  
“Alright. So when my girls go to search the rest of your ship, no one’s going to get hurt, right? No one’s going to be ambushed while they’re just looking, right?” Heize asked, raising a hand out to stop the other pirates from landing any more blows.  
  
Well. Sehun remembered those fucking dangerous rooms in the ship and hoped the pirates would stumble in them.  
  
“We’ll take one of you for insurance to ensure none of you try _anything._ If any trouble happens, Yezi will throw this one over the ship. But don’t worry. If you boys don’t try anything, we’ll be out of your way as soon as we get everything we need,” Heize said as she beckoned for her companion Yezi to drag Luhan towards the edge of the deck.  
  
Sehun could only watch in horror as Luhan screamed while he was being pushed to the edge of the railing, the view of the heights looming as he dangled above. Luhan struggled, screaming as he begged… _pleaded_ …anything but _this_. Anything but these heights, these _skies_.  
  
When Luhan saw the sky, he saw death.  
  
But Sehun didn’t.  
  
So Sehun opened his mouth, screamed for Luhan to be let go and asked for him to be used instead.  
  
“You?” Heize laughed, “You want to be dangled thousands of feet in the air instead? Fine. Yezi, please bring the other one back and dangle this one extra low for me.”  
  
Yezi hauled back Luhans, whose chest was heaving from his hysterical cries, and he slumped against Yifan and Jongin in relief…But as Yezi yanked Sehun along, preparing to dangle him half over the edge of the ship, Jongdae screamed out a single word.  
  
“No,” he yelled, standing up, attempting to push past the pirates holding him down.  
  
“Then take me, too. Use me, too,” Jongdae pleaded when nothing changed, struggling to stand, to reach Sehun whose body was already halfway across the railing.  
  
If Sehun was to fall, Jongdae would fall for him, too.  
  
“Oh?” Heize smiled, “then join him, too!”  
  
So Jongdae was closely shoved right next to Sehun as the two of them watched the heights from above with half their bodies off the ship and half just barely pressed against the railing. If the pirates’ arms got tired or if they let go of them at any moment, down they’d fall.  
  
Maybe this would be how he finally returned to the city, Sehun thought as blood rushed to his head. Broken bones, broken body and all.  
  
But Jongdae frantically realized he was experiencing…reliving an unseen, yet familiar sight again.  
  
“Look at me, see me…See me, Sehun. Don’t look below, alright? It’ll be fine,” Jongdae reassuringly said, though Sehun was not sure who Jongdae intended to comfort.  
  
Sehun looked anyways, looked at a sight more beautiful than any picturesque view could offer, looked at Jongdae, looked at the situation they were stuck in.  
  
There was a danger in living like he wanted.  
  
Sometimes it had unwanted consequences.  
  
Sehun was so fucking terrified, actually. More terrified than he’d care to admit or show, and he felt his arms shaking as he pondered what it’d be like to fall out of the sky, falling while realizing whenever he landed, that’d be it. The end. Flying was beautiful, but eventually he had to land, right?  
  
But Jongdae was pressed up against him, and the comfort Jongdae and his skin offered calmed him. Jongdae kept his pocket watch hanging from his neck, but Sehun was consoled by the ticking of Jongdae’s heart, the pulse that throbbed and beat against his skin.  
  
Jongdae himself was terrified out of his mind, and he wondered if this was how _he_ felt before he fell out of the sky that year ago, too.  
  
The both of them didn’t know how much time had passed, whether it had been ten minutes or ten hours, but soon, the pirates Heize sent to loot the ship had returned.  
  
“We couldn’t find the royal painting, boss…so I guess no bounty money again,” a voice said behind them, “But we found all these supplies instead.”  
  
“Of course you couldn’t find it,” Yifan said, “we’re only transporting medical supplies to hospitals. You wouldn’t have found what you were looking for here.”  
  
“Good enough. Shame you didn’t have what we were looking for. A painting worth that much? We would’ve thought you stole it,” the pirate said before Jongdae and Sehun felt themselves being pulled back over the railing until they were dropped on the deck. They collapsed next to each other, panting from the panic they felt and the mental exertion it took to be able to hold on, to not completely break out into hysterics when they saw their lives and deaths hanging before them.  
  
“What do we do now? This ship has golden pipes. Should we break them and sell them somewhere?” a pirate suggested.  
  
“They’re not actually made out of real gold,” Jongdae let out a laugh between deep, heaving breaths.  
  
“We’ll decide that for ourselves,” Heize said, “Alright go cut the pipes and bring them back to our sh—“  
  
“The time! It is time to see. Look. Find,” came an eerie, mechanical voice.  
  
“It’s back!” Jongin said a little too excitedly in such a situation.  
  
Heize took one look at the oncoming automaton and its glowing green eyes, observed the stopwatches dangling from its belt, and paled.  
  
“Oh my god…You’re one of _them_? No, no…We’re sorry for causing you trouble. We’ll be out of here right no—” She began to frantically say, gesturing for her crew to gather and head back to their ship.  
  
“What?” Yifan interrupted, not understanding why the rest of the pirates were panicking at the sight of a harmless automaton.  
  
“I _said_ we won’t bother you anymore…Just let us go, alright? We’ll be out of here, and you won’t hear from us again,” she said as her pirates rushed back, climbing onto the ladders that hung from their ship above.  
  
“This isn’t our automaton. We picked it up somewhere accidentally,” Yifan shook his head.  
  
“Oh _God_. You’ve been marked by them. I’d get rid of that if I were you…I’d get rid of that and fly as far away as I could if I were you,” Heize said before grabbing onto a ladder dangling from the sky, shooting them one last fearful look as her crewmates hoisted her back to their ship.  
  
And soon, the ship above flew off into dark clouds, disappearing as abruptly as it appeared.  
  
“Well. What do we do now about that,” Yifan said, observing the automaton carefully as Jongdae and Sehun rushed to free the others from the ropes.  
  
“Let’s deactivate it,” Luhan said, “Whatever it’s connected to can’t be good if it scared even those pirates.”  
  
“Agreed. I’ll deactivate it now,” Jongdae said as Sehun finished undoing the last of the ropes that held Jongin.  
  
The others watched as Jongdae calmly approached the automaton from behind and carefully pulled the circuits out without a second word. Sehun held his breath, expecting something awful to happen, but instead, the automaton quietly powered down and slumped onto the deck.  
  
Everyone fell into a deep silence as they watched the motionless figure and reflected on the danger that had passed luckily without too much damage.  
  
“Anyways, I still can’t believe they didn’t realize where you hid it,” Jongin piped up as he broke the silence.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Yifan chuckled, “Sorry for putting you guys through that, but at least they’re gone now.”  
  
“Wait…wait a minute,” Sehun said, raising a finger in the air to silence everyone else, “You guys fucking have the stolen royal painting? Oh my fucking—Who are you? Are you pirates too?”  
  
“Yifan, _don’t_ ,” Luhan warned, flashing him a glare.  
  
Yifan threw him a crooked smile in return and opened his mouth anyways.  
  
“Yifan. _Don’t_ ,” Luhan gritted his teeth.  
  
“I mean…it’s not stolen if I just borrowed it from my grandmother, right?” Yifan grinned as he ignored Luhan’s protests.  
  
Sehun blinked.  
  
Thought of what he had implied.  
  
And looked at Yifan and his stupid purple wig as the wind blew through its strands.  
  
_No._  
  
“Please tell me you’re not the missing crown prince…Please tell me that—“  
  
“Yifan, _no_ ,” Luhan snapped.  
  
“Introducing _myself_ Royal Crown Prince Kris Kriscasso Charlemagne Wu Yifan Fan Fan Ben Kevin Li Jiaheng the _Third_ ,” Yifan proudly said, standing with his arms on his hands firmly placed on his hips as the wind whipped his purple wig into his face.  
  
“…Can I call you Kevin,” was the only reply Sehun could possibly muster in that second.  
  
_The Third_?  
  
“Wouldn’t you rather call him Fan Fan? Isn’t it cute? Imagine that one day…King Fan Fan,” Jongdae laughed. Luhan sighed, though visibly looked unburdened now.  
  
“Oh my god,” Sehun said, and suddenly it all made sense…why Luhan was so protective of Yifan, why he had the painting, why this ship looked different than the others he had encountered. Yifan was the fucking crown _prince_ after all, and this was probably the legendary first airship made for the fucking prince.   
  
“Oh my _god_ ,” Sehun repeated, “I don’t have to bow now or kiss your hand right?”  
  
Amused, Yifan shook his head before explaining how nearly two years after too many assassination attempts, his grandmother the queen was ready to lock him inside the stuffy west tower of their mountain castle for the rest of her life to save him from everyone. But naturally, Yifan didn’t listen and ran away in the world’s first working air ship prototype even if it was dangerous, ran away with his grandmother’s painting as the biggest _fuck you, too, grandma_ , and ran away with his bodyguard, his stable boy, his engineer to sail the skies, travel the world, and transport medical supplies wherever they were needed.  
  
“So what happens when you have to be king?” Sehun asked curiously, in awe of Yifan’s ability to not give a fuck.  
  
“Never mind that. Let’s not think of that for now...some other time,” Yifan said, the wide grin faltering from his face.  
  
“Today’s the lantern festival, _Kevin_ ,” Jongin teased as Yifan sighed, “Can we celebrate on deck today?”  
  
“Absolutely. Sehun, do you want to help me in the kitchen today?” Luhan asked Sehun, brushing off debris from the fight before standing up. Surprised, Sehun wordlessly nodded and followed. The journey to the kitchen was quiet, and for a second Sehun thought everything was the same.  
  
But when Luhan handed him a basket of potatoes to peel with an actual metal tool and not a harmless plastic one like before, he said it.  
  
“Thank you. I’m sorry,” he muttered.  
  
“What?” Sehun said, halfway through peeling a potato.  
  
“I’m sorry…for being hard on you. I just didn’t know if you were some assassin ready to kill Yifan. He has no worry about his safety, but the kingdom’s future rests with him, and I just—” Luhan began to say.  
  
“I know. I get it, and it’s okay. You’d do anything to make sure he’s still alive. I understand that,” Sehun said.  
  
“Anything and everything,” Luhan nodded.  
  
“Even following him to the skies even though you hate the heights,” Sehun said.  
  
“Even that,” Luhan said, “When the royal family moved to a newly built castle in the mountains that was bad enough, but this. _This._ ”  
  
“How do you do it? I would be terrified every day on this thing,” Sehun asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Luhan gave a wry smile, “but I have to. I do it for him. For everyone. So thank you, Sehun. Thank you for saving me out there.”  
  
“It’s okay. I knew you hated the heights, so I just didn’t want you to suffer. And no one would miss me if I actually fell off the ship,” Sehun smiled.  
  
“That’s a lie and you know it,” Luhan shook his head as he began chopping up onions.  
  
“I mean, I thought you didn’t like me very much honestly,” Sehun said, “I thought you were ready to ship me down back there at whatever chance you had.”  
  
“Well. You’re not completely wrong, but it’s not that I didn’t like you, Sehun. I told you. I was just being cautious,” Luhan admitted, “And besides…if you won’t believe me, Yifan, or Jongin, then I know for sure that Jongdae would miss you very much.”  
  
Jongdae?  
  
“Yeah?” Sehun said, lowering his peeler.  
  
“Yeah,” Luhan nodded, “You’ve gotten him to open up and leave his little golden room. We’ve been trying to give him space after the accident, but it just feels like we’re distancing ourselves even further for him. So thank you for helping him heal and helping him live out in the open again.”  
  
Sehun was wordless. Speechless. He only nodded and tucked his rosy cheeks back into his work.  
  
Luhan and Sehun tried to make up for the lost time spent worrying and being cautious about each other and talked about the things they would have talked about had they been friendlier in the beginning. Luhan told Sehun stories about what Prince Kevin Li was like on the mountain…how he was very much like Sehun, always disobeying the queen’s orders to her tired bemusement and frustration, how he was always ready to sneak off to the poorer hospitals to help, how he, the bodyguard, had to stop endless attempts of assassinations.   
  
As time flew, its wispy seconds fluttering by as the hours struck golden, going, gone, Sehun found himself on deck with the potatoes he peeled cooked, the tension between him and Luhan more or less resolved, but the yearning he felt for Jongdae even more burningly rampant.  
  
But as everyone was eating, passing around the pots of food Luhan made, passing around the alcohol that everyone drank, passing around good spirits that caused Jongin to leap up to dance, Luhan to begin drunkenly singing, and Yifan to aimlessly bang on the table as a makeshift drum, Jongdae snuck off to go back to the deck, back to the edge of the ship, back to solitude.  
  
Or so he tried.  
  
“What do you see?” Sehun asked as he slid next to Jongdae to keep him company.  
  
“The stars,” Jongdae simply said.  
  
“Okay,” Sehun said, looking down at the flickering lights below.  
  
At nighttime, the smoke and ash were not very visible. At nighttime, the cities did not appear as horrific as they seemed to Sehun. So at nighttime, Sehun could look at the city a little more than usual without remembering too deeply the unpleasant memories he had of life below.  
  
The two of them stood in silence for a while as they leaned against the railings, taking in the scene, the sights, the stars before Jongin interrupted the silence with an excited scream.  
  
“It’s time! Look, it’s time!” Jongin clapped, ceasing his dancing for a moment to run over to the other side of the railings to look down below, “The people have released the lanterns!”  
  
Sehun peered closer down below and watched as Jongdae’s stars started floating up to the sky, drifting closer and closer to their airship.  
  
Growing up, Sehun remembered sending up a lantern once. Only once. Some shopkeeper had taken pity on him, a grimy child straight from the work houses wandering the streets while everyone celebrated the national holiday, and kindly gave him a lantern. Sehun did not have any pens with him to write his wish onto the lantern, but he did remember closing his eyes innocently, wishing for something…something heartbreakingly so out of reach back then…and solemnly gave it a little push and released it from his fingertips. He had watched as it disappeared into the flock of other shining stars stretching and reaching for the sky.  
  
Here he was years and years later, watching as the stars were coming home to the sky above.  
  
These were Jongdae’s stars floating back up and now, looking at these lanterns, these fiery lanterns, Sehun thought they looked like exploding suns.  
  
Jongdae, with tears in his eyes, could only smile as he leaned further and further over the railing to make the stars he loved appear closer and closer and closer until they were right next to him for a moment before they floated above.  
  
Sehun watched Jongdae’s awed, fond expression and reached out to steal a star from the sky for Jongdae.  
  
“Here,” Sehun said, gently handing it to Jongdae, “A star.”  
  
“You stole someone’s wish, Sehun,” Jongdae teased, but reached out to hold it.   
  
“Why don’t you make one, too,” Sehun said.  
  
Jongdae closed his eyes and wished while a sad smile spread across his lips, illuminated by the light. He held the star in between his hands for a moment longer before he reached across the railing and let his lantern go. Up and up and up it slowly drifted, catching up with the other glowing lights that were making their way home carrying with them the wishes of so many others. After Jongdae opened his eyes, he blinked for a moment, looking dazed. Sehun wondered what what he must've seen now before Jongdae reached out and took his hand instead.  
  
Jongdae grabbed Sehun’s hand, and without a further word, lead Sehun down the stairs, down the decks, down back into their room, and in the meantime, Sehun was very much aware of the fact that he was indeed holding Jongdae’s hand, feeling the warm skin against his, feeling the desire to stop and kiss him right then and there.  
  
But the look Jongdae gave Sehun when he sat them down on the windowsill of their giant circular window was something different. A look that made Sehun straighten up and listen.  
  
“Sehun, the sky is beautiful, and its stars are absolutely stunning. But the sky has been my home since I’ve been spending so much of my life fighting and living and surviving up here with only this ship and these clouds and this sky for company. I see those stars often enough. So down there…down in the cities with their burning lights? When it’s nighttime, _those_ are my stars,” Jongdae explained at last, his solemn expression erratically lit up by the passing lanterns that floated by their window.  
  
The city, the ashy city Jongdae longed to touch and to reach out for would never be Sehun’s stars, but he understood. Jongdae saw the city he missed and its tiny houses and tiny lights flickering in the distance and saw stars. Sehun saw the engineer and his beautiful smiles burning up like brilliant suns in his heart and saw –  
  
“I just…miss my family, Sehun,” Jongdae said, grasping Sehun’s hand tighter and tighter, “I miss all the times I spent with them, the times I couldn’t spend with them and the times I’ll never be able to spend with them.”  
  
“So tell me about your family, Jongdae. What are they like?” Sehun asked, trying to suppress the lingering bitterness from his smile. What was a blood family like? He wouldn’t know, but if Jongdae missed them this much every day and all the days that he would look at the stars and see them, then he was sure it’d be pretty great.  
  
Jongdae hesitated, but Sehun silently encouraged him, placing his free hand over Jongdae’s and squeezing it gently. With that, Jongdae let the words tumble out of his mouth as time flew, telling Sehun about his parents and how his mother would make the best lemon scones that would put Luhan’s to shame, how his father was always proud, always proud of himself, his family, everything he and they would do, how his sweet grandmother would yell at her boys for not cleaning up after themselves, but still slipped them sweets whenever she remembered.  
  
Boys?  
  
“And then there’s Jongdeok. My brother,” Jongdae said, his smile wavering and threatening to crumble even though he tried his best to stretch his lips to maintain that false sense that nothing was wrong, that he was perfectly happy, that he was okay.  
  
“Jongdeok,” Sehun repeated, already feeling sad listening to the way Jongdae said the name. He noticed Jongdae’s trembling, his cracking smile, and reached out to promise Jongdae he didn’t want to speak about anything he didn’t wish to talk about.  
  
“No. I’m _fine._ I need to do this. I _have_ to do this,” Jongdae said, squeezing Sehun’s hands tighter and tighter, nodding his head rapidly, and this time, Sehun was sure it was more to reassure Jongdae’s own self.  
  
So Sehun listened carefully as Jongdae told him about Jongdeok.  
  
Cocky Jongdeok.  
  
Cocky, Competitive, Cool Jongdeok.  
  
Dead. Jongdeok.  
  
Jongdae told him that Jongdeok always wanted to have the upper hand as his older brother, but that didn’t stop Jongdae from trying to outdo Jongdeok in everything since forever. The two of them raced through life, both trying to constantly outshine each other. But it was not all stiff competition all the time. Jongdeok would often take him for lemon ice cream that tasted like the sun and play with him while their parents worked.  
  
When Jongdae decided to run away with the royal prince to become the world’s first airship engineer, Jongdeok couldn’t resist the temptation of not being able to do what Jongdae did. He also didn’t like having Jongdae up in the sky, far away where their twin watches wouldn’t shine even a little bit together, far away where he couldn’t see him every day or any day at all, far away where he couldn’t protect Jongdae.  
  
So as soon as the military started weaponizing those airships like the military always had and always would, Jongdeok had signed up to fly one of those ships just like Jongdae’s…except just more dangerously.  
  
When Jongdae had found out that Jongdeok had enlisted, he was proud. But so _terrified_. Because if Jongdeok had gotten himself into dangerous trouble, there was no way Jongdae could help him, to reach out, to save him from falling out of the sky.  
  
And that’s exactly what happened.  
  
Jongdeok fell out of the sky following some sieges and skirmishes with pirates after his crew was left vulnerable following engine failure, his body never found, his twin clock resting wherever his broken body landed.  
  
Since then, Jongdae had never been able to free himself from the images of his scared brother grasping for the stars that would not save him as he fell, the sky disappearing from him, the time fading from him as everything would end.  
  
Was he scared?  
  
Did he scream?  
  
Or did he just accept the inevitable…accept that his time had run out?  
  
“That’s why it’s all my fault,” Jongdae exhaled as he finally almost finished his story, “If I hadn’t run away to do this, then he wouldn’t have followed. Then he would’ve still been alive. Then we would’ve had more time together.”  
  
“It’s not your fault, Jongdae,” Sehun shook his head, “You weren’t there to stop it, and there’s a choice. There’s always a choice…to live, to make decisions that might shorten or lengthen our time here. But there is always a choice, and Jongdeok’s choice to see the skies was not your fault.”  
  
“I let him follow me up here. I almost let this ship fall apart like his…I could’ve _killed_ you and everyone else,” Jongdae frantically said, his tears trailing down his cheeks at last, “I don’t even know how I can face myself after all this…All I see is a scared, cowardly engineer who could kill his friends any second if he fucks up, who caused his own brother to die, who can’t even act on his own feelings about—“  
  
“That’s what you see? Your vision must be a little hazy from spending all those days shut up in your smoky, steamy room because what I see? When I look at you, Jongdae, what I see is a brave, intelligent engineer. You're the first one to fly oh my god do you know how incredible that is? And everything you do, you’ve ever done, you will do to protect those you care about has not been for nothing. You are so amazing at what you do, and look at us now! We’re alive, sailing through the skies, sailing day after day after night after day, and we’re fine. We’re okay. We’re _alive_ , and it’s all thanks to you…You’re incredible, Jongdae,” Sehun rambled passionately.  
  
When Sehun looked at Jongdae, he saw the magnificence, the beauty of all the stars above contained into one radiant, shining human being who was so irrevocably stunning that Sehun couldn’t bear to look away even when it burned to keep staring. He saw the yearning the desire for all the things he wished for in Jongdae’s rosy cheeks and sparkling laughter. And he saw the simple, bright hope of his lantern wish he made all those years ago coming to life right now in front of him.  
  
Jongdae gazed at Sehun who bared his heart open for Jongdae to see, to feel, to understand, and _cried_.  
  
Jongdae cried, expelling a year’s worth of emotional devastation, hurt, loss. He cried for Jongdeok, for himself and the life he guilted himself into refusing, and he cried thinking about the possibility that he might have never been lucky enough to meet Sehun. Sehun reached out, this time unhesitant as he hugged Jongdae, pressing his body closer and closer and tighter and tighter to Jongdae to give comfort.  
  
“You’re wonderful, Sehun,” was all Jongdae could say after time passed and his sobs had quieted down to mere hiccups, “Absolutely wonderful.”  
  
“Me?” Sehun smiled a crooked grin, “That’s not what the work house supervisors would say exactly, but –“  
  
“Hush,” Jongdae shakily said as he released himself from Sehun’s embrace to wipe a stray tear from his eye. He was calmer now…much more calmer now…and at peace for now. All thanks to Sehun. “I don’t know what happened to you down in the city for you to hate it so much, but –“  
  
“The thing about being an orphan,” Sehun said, finally speaking at last before Jongdae lowered his hand and listened, “is that if no rich family wants to adopt you, you’ll get sent to the work houses. At those work houses, they’ll feed you enough to keep you alive, but just barely alive…and in return for that meager food they give you, they’ll work you until there’s nothing left, Jongdae…work you day and night in the smoky factories while everyone’s coughing and crying around you. So of course I hate the city. Of course I hate its smoke. Of course I left. It’s not fun when the supervisors who do nothing get paid more, paid to yell at these people and always scream that everyone’s useless…I’m useless...always a waste of space that someone else could fill easily so maybe I should inhale more of the smoke so my lungs can give out earlier on me.”  
  
“Sehun,” Jongdae said, unsure of what to say.  
  
“So what I’m saying…is that you’re an amazing engineer with a beautiful heart, and I’m…no one, really,” Sehun shrugged. He wasn’t exactly bothered by it, having been told that for much of his life.  
  
“That’s a fucking _lie_ and you know it,” Jongdae said, wrenching his hand out of Sehun’s grasp to point and jab at Sehun’s chest.  
  
“You’re Sleepy. Stowaway. Sehun who decided to say _fuck it_ and run away from the life that was killing him, who decided to say _fuck you_ and climb aboard the fucking royal prince’s ship to mess with him and his crew to see the skies, who decided to make me think _fuck me_ when you entered my little engine room, tousled hair, wide eyes, open heart and all,” Jongdae passionately continued on, “You’re beautiful, wonderful, and your desire to seize life? Your greed for life…to be able to live the way you want? I love that so much about you.”  
  
Sehun paused, took in the implications of what Jongdae had said, and didn’t have the time to thank him for all those gleaming words because he was already leaning in, his heart swelling and burning brighter than all of the stars Jongdae loved. He leaned in, gently not so gently grasping Jongdae’s face with his hands so he could gaze so fondly at him. For a moment, maybe a second, maybe more…who even knew now, time seemed to stop as Sehun gazed into Jongdae’s eyes…and Jongdae felt his breath choked and lost in his wordless throat as he looked back, the two of them simply taking the time to revel in and appreciate each other’s mere presences.  
  
And then as the clock struck some hour that the two of them did not care to pay attention to, Sehun was jolted out of his awe for Jongdae and acted, kissing him so fiercely as if there was no time left in the world, the two of them lost within each other as golden stars floated by their window.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
If Sehun disliked the urgent, punctual time of clocks when his life used to run on hours and alarms, he hated it even more now because he had more reasons to want to slow down and ignore the hourly reminders there was a schedule to follow. Of course, work was more leisurely, less rushed on the airship, but Sehun would much rather spend as much time as possible with Jongdae. And so he did.  
  
Even after the clock would strike on the hour, signaling the time for Sehun to go help Yifan with something, time to clean the decks, time for something that would cause him to leave Jongdae’s side, now, Sehun defied the clocks. Before the ringing, tolling chimes urged him onto his next task, Sehun ignored time to steal a few more seconds, moments, memories to steal lingering kisses, lingering embraces, lingering looks before leaving.  
  
Jongdae embraced solitude before, but after the golden doors would shut as Sehun walked out of them whenever he had other duties to fulfill, he yearned not for Sehun to come back, although that too would be nice, but to be out of this steamy engine room he had shut himself in for so long. He had already spent more time he had been used to out of the engine room with a few dinners here and there and even sleeping longer in their shared room.

Perhaps it was time. It was time to be a little braver, to give a few more minutes here and there out of the engine room, to trust that the seconds Jongdae spent thinking about something else other than the state of the gears or the structural pipes would be seconds that everyone would be okay. So more mornings, Jongdae found himself deciding he would not have to go to the engine room just yet. He would not and wanted not either.  
  
Because on mornings like this…mornings where the sun would shine in gently through the window panes, where Sehun was across the room in his own bed still sleeping, but where Jongdae was wide awake and conscious of his ticking heart beating so contentedly in such a peaceful moment, there was no way he could leave all of this behind just yet to rush off to work any more.  
  
But what he could do, and what he often did, however, was throw off the covers of his bed and quietly walk across the room to Sehun, who still slept peacefully, clutching the pillow tightly as he curled up under his blankets. Without a second thought, Jongdae would slide into Sehun’s bed and hug his back as he whispered good morning. While Sehun was busy dreaming of curved lips and endless skies, the punctuated words that drifted in tugged a smile on his face, and stretching, he turned to face the sunlight that streamed in through the window.  
  
“This has to be a dream,” he sleepily yawned, turning to blink blearily at Jongdae’s beautiful face. Such a sight was too overwhelming to bear so early in the morning.  
  
But then again.  
  
When could Sehun ever possibly not be overwhelmed by Jongdae?  
  
Never.  
  
“Hush, Sehun,” Jongdae laughed, “We overslept today…or at least I did. But we can just go to the engine room later.”  
  
“Really? Later?” Sehun asked.  
  
“Yes. Later…there’s no rush. We have time,” Jongdae slowly said.  
  
“We have time,” Sehun said, feeling so fond of and proud of Jongdae as he reached out a hand to touch Jongdae’s cheek.  
  
“Time for this,” Jongdae said, moving to curl up under the covers before nestling his head into Sehun’s neck.  
  
“Can’t we just push the beds together so we can sleep together?” Sehun innocently asked as he wrapped an arm around Jongdae.  
  
“That would be lovely…Let’s –” Jongdae began to say.  
  
“Time! It’s time,” Jongin’s voice rang loudly as he knocked on their door, “It’s breakfast time!”  
  
Ah.  
  
Time.  
  
“Not now,” Sehun sleepily murmured, “Not today…not the time for that…now.”  
  
Sehun shut out time as he shut his eyes again, curling up into Jongdae tighter as he fell back asleep. Jongdae allowed himself to rest more, only thinking about the engine once or twice before he closed his eyes. Time seemed to slow just for them, flying by lazily as the two of them slept, putting off the time, the present time for now.  
  
Later that afternoon, when they finally awoke, Sehun refused to let go of Jongdae’s hand as they walked out to the deck as the rest of their crew prepared to land. No matter how many times the ship landed, he could not yet shake the unpleasant sensation that triggered his heartbeat to stutter and beat wildly.  
  
After having much of their supplies taken by the pirates and having much of their remaining supplies donated to hospitals they visited, Yifan’s crew had managed to restock most of their supplies, but they were still missing a few important things before they would make a bigger stop at a children’s hospital in a remote mountain top community. So here they were landing at a rest stop Yifan was not familiar with, but one they had to try anyways given the lack of options.  
  
“The time! Is three o’clock. Please enjoy your stay,” an automaton mechanically greeted them as they landed on free space.  
  
“Everyone, grab what we decided on buying, and we’ll meet back here in an hour and a half, alright?” Yifan announced.  
  
Sehun walked with Jongdae, listening quietly and intently as he chattered about mountain rest stops like these and how the humans of that city down below probably didn’t bother sending up people to work because they could afford automatons to stand in place for them when they didn’t want to work. Sehun asked if many mountain communities actually existed, and Jongdae simply replied that the biggest mountain community was the royal capital where Yifan’s grandmother lived. Ah. Of course.  
  
Even though only the automatons populating the place announced the time eerily every now and then, Sehun couldn’t help but feel like they were being watched or followed. He turned to look behind him as the automatons began crowding them.  
  
“Jongdae, we bought everything we needed right,” Sehun said, nervously looking back at the automatons and feeling quite unsettled.  
  
“Yes, but we still have half an hour before we have to go,” Jongdae said as he handed one automaton some money in exchange for large gears.  
  
“Can we possibly…go now?” Sehun asked, pointing backwards at them, and when Jongdae turned his head to look at the swarm of automatons watching them, he smiled a tense smile before grabbing Sehun’s arm tightly.  
  
“Next time let’s stick to rest stops we know,” Jongdae said as he quickly dragged them towards the ship.  
  
“ _Please_ ,” Sehun agreed, the two of them all but running as soon as they neared the ship.  
  
“Can we please go,” Sehun yelled as he caught sight of Yifan, Luhan, and Jongin lounging about as the automatons began creeping forwards, the cranking of the gears becoming louder and louder.  
  
“What the _fuck_? Yifan get on the ship. Let’s go,” Luhan said, ushering Yifan onto the ship before any possible danger could befall upon him.  
  
“Time to bring up the anchor,” Jongin said, paling at the eerie sight.  
  
Moments later, Jongdae and Sehun rested a bit more comfortably as they reached the ship, looking down at the railings as they could not help but remember the warning that had been told to them all that time ago…  
  
The automatons now chimed all together discordantly announcing dissonant times and grating farewells. Most waved their rusty arms enthusiastically as they continued speaking. Others hopped up and down, protesting why their visitors had left so soon. Some watched them silently, a few stopwatches dangling off their belts.  
  
_You’ve been marked_.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
Over time, everyone resumed their normal schedules as they retrieved and gathered some more supplies, dropped some off at more hospital, and were now traveling directly to that children’s hospital in the northern mountains.  
  
So none of them put much thought to the automatons until it was almost too late. Almost.  
  
“I thought we deactivated the automaton?” Luhan said, tensing as an automaton barged into the kitchen in the middle of dinnertime with blinking red eyes.  
  
“This has to be a different one then,” Jongdae said, dropping his fork in order to abruptly stand up from his bench, “You have to manually reactivate them especially if their wire’s been pulled out.”  
  
“It’s no matter, we’ll just deactivate this one too and get rid of them at the next rest stop,” Yifan shrugged.  
  
The automaton didn’t seem to quite like that idea, as its eyes glowed brighter and redder before it quickly lunged towards Yifan with a metallic screech. But Luhan was quicker, and before any harm could come towards Yifan, he had wrestled it to the floor, pinning its flailing arms behind its back before Jongdae rushed over to help rip out its circuits. Slowly, its screams died down as the light faded from its eyes.  
  
“Well. That was something,” Yifan tensely said before he thanked Luhan for saving him.  
  
“Where should we keep this thing in case it causes more trouble,” Luhan said, still pinning the automaton to the floor, not trusting it to stay down.  
  
But before anyone could answer, the kitchen door slammed open and in swarmed three other automatons with their gears clicking wildly and their arms reached out to attack.  
  
“Time! Time! Time! Look! Find! Look! Die! Die! Die!” the automatons screeched dissonantly as they lunged for the nearest person to injure.  
  
“What the _fuck_ ,” Sehun yelped as Luhan quickly picked up a pan from the kitchen sink to slam into one automaton’s face. But Sehun could not afford to keep watching, as an automaton was clanking towards him, steam angrily blowing out of its ears.  
  
Really, if the automaton could move faster, then Sehun would be even more terrified. But he was already scared _enough_ , and with trembling arms, he searched the kitchen table for anything to use as a makeshift weapon. When his fingers found the hilt of a knife, Sehun lunged forwards to try and stab the automaton, but the blade uselessly deflected off the automaton’s chest without even managing to scratch it.  
  
_Fuck_.  
  
Before Sehun had time to try a different option, the automaton laid its hands around his neck, immediately trying to choke him. Sehun weakly felt himself being lifted into the air, his legs dangling as his own hands tried to futilely wrench the automaton’s grip away from his neck so he could breathe, breathe, _breathe_.  
  
Stop, stop, _sto_ —  
  
Then a furious yell sounded throughout the kitchen, echoing louder and fiercer than all the screeches of the automatons combined before Sehun felt the hands around his throat loosen their grip until he dropped to the floor, struggling to catch his breath.  
  
Slowly, the automaton flickered out before it dropped to the floor with a clang, its assailant standing furiously above with fisted hands and a cold sneer upon his lips.  
  
_Jongdae_.  
  
But immediately, after he saw Sehun sprawled on the floor fighting to breathe normally again, Jongdae dropped to his knees, the previous fury fading fast, only to be replaced by frantic concern.  
  
“Are you okay? Sehun, are you okay?” Jongdae said, rubbing Sehun’s back as he searched Sehun for any visible injuries.  
  
Sehun only managed to nod. This was not enough for Jongdae.  
  
“Yifan, can we throw the automatons off the ship,” Jongdae asked as he continued to rub Sehun’s back soothingly to assure him that he was here, that he was not dead, that he would take care of _everything_. Like he’d always done.  
  
This was when it counted. This was when true danger arose, not in the moments he was waiting and anticipating engine failure that would not happen on his watch.   
  
“Jongdae, that is a fantastic idea that I would most definitely agree with, but what if the automatons hit someone when they land? What if they somehow explode when they hit the ground and cause fires? We can’t risk that,” Yifan said as Luhan pressed some ice to his forehead.  
  
“Why did you have to trip on your own feet,” Luhan amusedly muttered as he reached out his other hand that Jongin was busy bandaging.  
  
“Yifan, it hurt everyone. It could’ve _killed_ us,” Jongdae said.  
  
“We can’t risk the damages it might do if we dispose of them like that. Be patient. Lock them up in storage. We’ll get rid of them on our next stop,” Yifan commanded, and Jongdae silently conceded.  
  
Shortly afterwards, all four automatons were locked in the upper deck’s storage room, eerily lined up like copper toy soldiers.  
  
_You’ve been marked_.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Sehun didn’t know whether the threat of the automatons in the upper deck or something else persuaded Jongdae to show up more often, but whatever the reason, he did not mind it at all. Not at all.  
  
Jongdae indeed began spending less and less time trapped in his engine room and more time out in the sun, out helping outside, out living outside. He was still not eating with everyone regularly, but he was trying. He couldn’t change what had happened to Jongdeok, but it was useless to keep hiding in his engine room pretending that he needed to be overly careful about what had happened and be overprotective of this ship.  
  
He just needed to live.  
  
And he was trying.  
  
His effort didn’t even have to manifest in big ways either. Sometimes it was as simple as saying yes to Sehun when he would try to lead him out to dinner. Sometimes it was spending a few extra minutes to clear up the dining table instead of rushing to check on the gears, the pipes, the ship. And sometimes it was knowing when enough was enough and it was okay to go inside now.  
  
Jongdae was trying, and that was more than enough.  
  
On nights when Jongdae was holding Sehun’s hand instead of worrying over the ship while they discussed more things like the lives they could’ve lived if they didn’t end up here and the lives they would have never lived if they didn’t end up here, it did not feel like trying, but more like this.  
  
Living.  
  
“Why is Yifan’s painting so important anyways…You know the royal one that everyone wants,” Sehun asked on nights like this. Jongdae had forsaken the use of his own bed and opted to sleep beside Sehun now, curling up as he listened to Sehun’s heart beat, a ticking sound more comforting than any other clock could make.  
  
“It’s his grandma,” Jongdae murmured, rubbing Sehun’s skin with his thumb, “She had the painting commissioned as a sort of inheritance gift for Yifan, but maybe it’s just the frame that’s the most important.”  
  
Most important?  
  
Jongdae seemed to anticipate Sehun’s question, as he then added that it was valuable because it was a solid gold, gilded frame that had the royal family’s precious jewel collection studded on it.  
  
“So because his dear grandma the Queen put out a bounty for the painting and him, it’s been lost in translation. No one’s looking for Yifan, but everyone’s been looking for the golden painting,” Jongdae said.  
  
“Wow. Does she realize how much danger she’s put him in,” Sehun asked.  
  
“I think she was hoping for…not pirates or bounty hunters to go looking for the ship,” Jongdae replied.  
  
“Wait. Then if he actually still has the painting, then how did the pirates who came last time not find it?” Sehun asked.  
  
“He painted over it,” Jongdae said amusedly.  
  
Oh my god.  
  
A valuable painting.  
  
A solid gold, bejeweled, valuable painting.  
  
And Kris Kriscasso Charlemagne Wu Yifan Fan Fan Ben…  
  
No…  
  
Fucking _Kevin_ painted over it.  
  
Incredible.  
  
Truly incredible.  
  
“He did it to hide it in plain sight,” Jongdae chuckled.  
  
“Oh my god,” Sehun said, remembering the shining, framed painting of cartoonish stick figures hanging above Yifan’s desk, “It’s the one in his office isn’t. The ugly white one?”  
  
“Aren’t all of them a little…questionable? Endearing but questionable? But yes,” Jongdae said.  
  
Sehun burst out laughing.  
  
“How much is the bounty on it?” He asked.  
  
“A lot. At least a third of the Queen’s personal funds,” Jongdae said.  
  
“Damn,” Sehun said, “Even a tiny fraction of that could’ve fed my workhouse for like…a whole decade. I’m sure there wouldn’t have been any days where I’d be completely starving.”  
  
“You’re here now, so you don’t have to worry about those things anymore,” Jongdae said.  
  
“Yeah. It’s funny how things can change in such a short amount of time,” Sehun said, feeling grateful he was here.  
  
“Blink and people leave your life,” Jongdae said, thinking of Jongdeok.  
  
“Blink and people come into your life,” Sehun answered, thinking of Yifan and Jongin and Luhan.  
  
And Jongdae.  
  
Especially Jongdae.  
  
And that was it.  
  
Blink and suddenly fifty years would pass, blink and suddenly children were aged, older, on the brink of passing on themselves.  
  
Blink and time passed.  
  
Sehun didn’t want to blink and realize he was ninety years old and that his life had flown by so quickly, so he wanted to slow down and enjoy all the moments. He wanted to cherish spending his days with the crew, all the nights sleeping under the stars, all the forevers with Jongdae before it was too late.  
  
And truly, deciding to be brave and to run away freely, to run to the skies, to run to see the stars was the best decision Sehun had ever made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET’S GO! IT’S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
Sehun would only come to regret that decision for the slightest moment one day.  
  
It was supposed to be a nice day…a pleasant day for cruising around…a fucking _beautiful_ day that was starting off wonderfully after breakfast on deck. A beautiful, absolutely _wonderful_ day, fuck.  
  
Sehun had just finished breakfast when Jongdae asked him to grab those new gears they had picked up from the storage room on the top deck, promising he would meet him back in the engine room. Briefly, Jongdae teased him as he wondered whether or not Sehun would be able to find the engine room all by himself in good time this time before leaving cheerfully.  
  
So sulking, Sehun found himself looking inside the storage room for the gears, rushing himself because he most definitely did not want to be here next to all the stored, deactivated automatons. Four…no five? Five of them? Sehun couldn’t remember there being five, but the memory of what the automatons were capable of unsettled him.  
  
Grabbing the needed gears, Sehun immediately turned towards the door before letting his hand rest on the doorknob as he stared out of the window, confused at the sight.  
  
It seemed as if some sort of odd cloud was approaching them…no, not a cloud but some odd object? Ropes? Patterned ropes?  
  
Fuck.  
  
A net?  
  
A giant net seemingly loomed in the horizon, getting closer and closer until it constricted the ship, and Sehun wanted to run out to see what was happening, but then a metallic noise that echoed behind him caused him to panic.  
  
The fifth automaton’s eyes began slowly flickering as a low humming noise began to emit louder and louder, and feeling just a little terrified, Sehun dove behind large, dusty boxes in order to survey the scene.  
  
When it was fully awakened, the automaton blinked before turning its head to view the other deactivated automatons. As quickly as it could, it reached beside it to bend another automaton’s neck before quickly fixing the circuiting. Within moments, the other automaton was alive, blinking its glowing eyes before turning to the next automaton and reactivating it.  
  
Horrified, Sehun held his breath as he watched all five automatons slam the storage door open before streaming outside to do who knew what.  
  
Quickly, loud thuds echoed outside, and Sehun hoped that it was Yifan just accidentally dropping some bowls…very large bowls. But when he heard yelling, he knew it could not be.  
  
“Who’s the captain around here?” a foreign voice called out.  
  
Curiously, Sehun crawled out of his hiding spot, crept outside, and peeked out of the corner of the storage room to survey what had happened.  
  
Their ship had been caged in a giant net that hung from an enormous ship above that blocked the sun and cast a shadow over everything, and the automatons had caught Yifan, Luhan, and Jongin and were busy tying them to the mast while a few humans supervised.  
  
Jongdae was nowhere to be seen, and relieved, Sehun was glad it seemed he had long since headed into the engine room before anything happened to him.  
  
Sehun watched as the humans circled the others, asking questions no one answered. Frustrated, one man suggested that they should torture them until they speak before another man shook his head and said the captain wouldn’t like that just yet.  
  
Captain?  
  
The captain wasn’t here yet?  
  
Who were these pirates?  
  
“We’ve been following you around, you know. Sending some automatons after you was so easy to do since you left your ship unattended,” a pirate said, stopwatches dangling from his belt.  
  
The words sent chills racing up Sehun’s spine. How long had they been following them?  
  
_You’ve been marked_.  
  
“Word’s been getting around that there’s a stupid captain with a small crew flying around with that golden painting. So, we’ve been keeping tabs on you, and while our automatons haven’t found anything yet since you cruelly deactivated all but one, we decided to pay a visit anyways,” one pirate said.  
  
“Why isn’t your crew bigger? What type of a ship only has five people anyways…but we’re not complaining. It’ll be easier to kill you after we’re all done and we’ve taken everything we wan—" one pirate taunted before his comrade elbowed him and gestured up to the sky.  
  
One thickly bearded, muscled man began climbing down from one of the ladders that hung from the ship and promptly marched towards them. He was heavily armed with a belt full of bullets and other odd shining things. With his contemptuous look and cold glint in his eyes, he reminded Sehun briefly of his old work house supervisors who had taken pleasure in beating the children who had failed to complete the staggering amount of work for the day. So naturally, Sehun instantly hated him.  
  
“Captain,” the pirates nodded as the man said nothing in reply.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Sehun watched as more pirates climbed down from the ladders, circling his friends as they suggested forms of torture to use to make them talk.  
  
“Now, now…settle down. We’ll get to that later,” the captain said, raising a hand to calm the pirates down, “It doesn’t matter if the painting is or isn’t here. We’ll figure it out. Go find the other two members of this crew. If we kill them right in front of their eyes we’ll see if these boys will talk then.”  
  
“Who first?” one pirate eagerly asked.  
  
“Start with the engineer. He shouldn’t be hard to kill if you corner him in his engine room.”  
  
_No._  
  
Sehun’s heart began beating faster and faster, his hands curled up into fists as he listened to the pirates discuss who would head inside to find Jongdae. He couldn’t allow anything bad to happen to Jongdae.  
  
Not this time.  
  
Not any time.  
  
Never.  
  
So as he pushed aside his fear momentarily to act, he did the most rational thing he could think of.  
  
Piss them off.  
  
“Hey _fuckfaces_ ,” Sehun screamed, jumping out from his hiding spot to wave his arms around as he caught their attention, ”I didn’t know you were so  _stupid_ last time to miss that whole gallery of valuable paintings, but good luck trying to take it from us.”  
  
In the distance, Sehun could vaguely see Luhan sighing, Yifan looking amused, and Jongin biting back a laugh. How encouraging.  
  
“Get him,” the captain barked, his jaw locked…obviously not quite liking the idea of being called a fuckface.  
  
Oh.  
  
Right.  
  
Sehun almost forgot the part where they’d be trying to _kill_ him, and quickly he turned around and sprinted towards the lower deck, hoping to lose the pirates in the labyrinth. He heard a smattering of footsteps heading straight for him, and frantically he dug in his heels and pressed on harder, harder, harder, only getting slightly startled when a shower of bullets nearly missed him and embedded themselves in the wooden frame near him.  
  
“Your aiming is _shit_ ,” he managed to have the courage to scream before a bullet tore a hole in the golden pipes above him, causing steam to escape rapidly.  
  
Without a further look behind him, Sehun ran towards the steam, towards the stairs of the lower deck, towards Jongdae.

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET'S GO! IT'S TIME!

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
The golden torches still shone brightly, but Sehun supposed the long corridors would not help hide him if they were this lit. Hopefully he would still be able to lose them, and aimlessly, he ran around, trying to reach Jongdae before the pirates did.   
  
But alas of course he forgot, or he swore he forgot that the layout of the labyrinth must surely change every day because he did not know which way to turn.  
  
“Split up and look for him,” came a snarl down the hallway, which was Sehun’s cue to duck behind a corner and take a break to catch his breath, his arms only slightly trembling as he fought to control his adrenaline, his fear, his panic.  
  
The echo of trampling footsteps thundered past him, and Sehun paused to think which way would be the best way to try and go this time. Peeking out, Sehun ran across the connecting hallway, hoping no one saw him, hoping he could find something in the rooms to use to defend himself.  
  
No, that was the ruby spider webs room. Useless.  
  
No, that was the inverted fountain room. Unhelpful.  
  
Oh. That was th—  
  
_Hey stop right there_ thundered a hostile voice, which caused Sehun to of course not raise his hands slowly above his head like a person fearing for their life in times of danger and guns, but to instead jerk his head panickedly around and unleash a stream of profanities under his breath. One pirate steadily advanced, raising his sword as he approached Sehun. Who the _fuck_ still used swords nowadays? But Sehun wasn’t complaining because all he’d have to do was make sure he was as far away from the sword as possible.  
  
“Guys, I f—“ he was about to say before Sehun cut him off.  
  
“You’ve already got me, so don’t you want me to show you where the painting is? So you can impress your captain? Be the guy who got the painting first?” Sehun began talking, capturing the pirate’s interest.  
  
The pirate contemplated Sehun’s proposal before raising the sword to Sehun’s neck, the sudden movement causing the many stopwatches on his belt to jingle furiously.  
  
“How do I know you’re not playing me,” he growled.  
  
“Listen, Watches…Can I call you Watches,” Sehun said, quickly glancing at the rustling watches before sighing as the pirate looked at him unpleasantly, “Does it look like I want to fucking die by such an outdated weapon? I would rather much just _tell_ you and hope you’ll take me up—“  
  
“Shut _up_ ,” Watches snapped before pressing his sword into Sehun’s neck even deeper than before.  
  
“If you try anything, I’ll stab you right here,” the pirate said, “So where is it.”  
  
“Here,” Sehun said, glancing at the door beside them.  
  
A door with that pink doorknob.  
  
The pirate glanced at the door, back at Sehun, then at the doorknob, then back at Sehun, and then moved slowly, placing his hand on the doorknob. Making sure to keep the sword placed on Sehun’s neck, the pirate eagerly swung the door wide open, his greed getting the better of him.  
  
“What the _fuck_ there’s nothing in here except pink bubb—“ the pirate began to say before Sehun quickly moved, wincing as he ducked his head to move away from the sword, suffering a little cut on his neck in the process.  
  
Before the pirate could say anything else, Sehun pushed him into the room, towards the pink bubbles, towards hopefully incapacitation or something…grabbed the pink doorknob, and slammed it behind him. Sehun held the door closed, the crescendoing screams still resonating loudly from behind the door. He really w—  
  
_Hey stop right there!_  
  
Fuck.  
  
Sehun didn’t even have time to look in the direction of the voice before he bolted in the opposite direction, tucking around the corners so quickly that the flames of the golden torches that lined the hallway flickered as he ran past them.  
  
Hide, hide, hide…  
  
The footsteps sounded louder.  
  
_Hide, hide, hide_ …  
  
Frantically, Sehun looked at all his options in front of him and pulled open the door with the invisible doorknob before running inside, sinking to the floor as he caught his breath and stared at the hole in the ground. The sight of impending doom below him should have and would have scared him a long time ago, but as time passed and no one burst open the door ready to kill him, Sehun calmed down and stood, slowly opening the door to look to the left.  
  
No one.  
  
So he slowly looked to the right and –  
  
_Damn_.  
  
A pistol was cocked right in front of Sehun’s face, and he slowly tilted his head to meet its owner.  
  
“Hey,” he greeted as most charmingly as he could even though his head could be blown to bits any second.  
  
“What did you do to—” the pirate began to say, pressing the pistol directly to Sehun’s head.  
  
“Who? Watches?” Sehun stammered as he backed into the room to avoid direct contact.  
  
“Wait…What the _fuck_ is wrong with your ship,” the pirate said, distracted by the apparent hole in the ship.  
  
“I happen to think it’s quite quaint, actually. I like it. I’ve come to like it a lot,” Sehun rambled, placing his feet just before the glass or clear air or whatever the fuck it was.  
  
“Now, if you don’t want to fall down your ship, you’re going to tell me where the painting is. I know your stupid captain has it somewhere,” the pirate said, stepping backwards now that he had the upper hand leaving Sehun cornered by the hole and his pistol.  
  
“Don’t call Yifan stupid. He’s just…eccentric. Well-meaning, but in need of better fashion taste I think,” Sehun continued to keep talking as he swayed back and forth on the spot. If he could just trick the pirate into thinking that this was a real hole, then maybe he could stun the pirate by pushing him into the glass and running before he would realize he was still actually on the ship and not tumbling to his death down below.  
  
“Don’t _fuck_ with me. Tell me where it is,” the pirate said, pushing the pistol into Sehun’s face, which, unfortunately for the both of them, startled Sehun enough to take a step backwards. Onto the glass.  
  
Sehun looked down at his right foot, which rested comfortably on the glass and then looked upwards at the pirate who looked at the ground and back upwards at Sehun before his lips curled into a cruel smile.  
  
“It’s just glass, right? You were trying to mess with me, right?” the pirate said.  
  
“Damn…I don’t even know what it is honestly,” Sehun shook his head rapidly, his heart beating faster and faster. Briefly he hoped Jongdae had managed to stay safe and undetected in his engine room. If Sehun couldn’t find the engine room in time before he got caught, then surely the other pirates wouldn’t have been able to either. Hopefully. Right?  
  
Curiosity getting the better of him, the pirate cautiously tapped a foot onto the glass before resting some of his weight on it, half of his body on the wood, the other half on the glass.  
  
Well.  
  
There went Sehun’s plan of stunning him and running.  
  
“Walk on the glass to prove it’s not a trick,” the pirate commanded.  
  
“What?” Sehun said, “Don’t you want to know where the painting is?”  
  
“I said _walk_ ,” the pirate said, firing a shot into the ceiling’s golden pipes that ran through the ceiling, causing steam to angrily hiss out of the pipes.  
  
“Alright, _alright_ ,” Sehun said, backing up slowly, taking a step and then another step until he was standing in the middle of nothing as the countryside below him peeked up at him.  
  
“About the painting,” Sehun said, nervously glancing at the way the pirate’s gun had pointed itself back at him again. But the pirate’s gaze was fixed towards the ground, entranced by the sights and the impossibility of the situation.  
  
“Shut _up_ for a second, _god_ ,” the pirate snapped, jolting out of his distracted state to try and take several steps in Sehun’s direction in order to shut him up for good.  
  
Except he never reached Sehun.  
  
Because when he advanced onto the glass, the pirate fell straight through.  
  
What should have been, what never was.  
  
Sehun clapped his hands over his mouth, watching horrifically as the pirate screamed as he tumbled below, fell out of the sky, fell down, down, down…Terrified, he rushed back to the wood, back to safety, his fingers and hands scrambling over the ground…the hard ground…the solid ground.   
  
Sehun allowed himself to panic properly for a moment or two before he rushed out of the room without a look back because he still had to find Jongdae. He still had to get to that gleaming room, that glowing doorknob, that gorgeous engineer. He rushed faster and faster, hoping the maze of the lower deck would align properly to lead him to the engine room. He quickly turned corners, pleading with the ship just this once please, please, pl—  
  
_Hey! Stop right there!_  
  
Damn.  
  
A shot rang through the air as a pirate fired at him.  
  
Again.  
  
And again.  
  
Hands trembling, Sehun panicked as he turned the corner and opened the closest door he could find with shaking hands and backed off into the edge of the room he had found.  
  
Looking around as his heart beat wildly, Sehun realized just what room he found himself in.  
  
Oh.  
  
The darkness room.  
  
The steady dripping of darkness throughout the room calmed him down a little, and Sehun listened with relief as the sound of footsteps slowly died down.  
  
But then the door burst open, knocking Sehun back onto the floor.  
  
“Time’s up. Where’s the painting,” another pirate said, looking into the room with paranoia.  
  
This time, Sehun didn’t have any smart answer for the pirate. He was so tired…mentally and physically wearied from all the things that had happened in the last moments or so.  
  
Unfortunately for Sehun, the pirate was not willing to wait for answers and immediately shot the ground next to Sehun in an effort to make him talk.  
  
“The painting. _Where. Is. It_ ,” the pirate growled.  
  
But Sehun didn’t have time to answer because the inky darkness began dripping faster, faster, _faster_ from the ceiling until a downpour of darkness began submerging every inch of the room in the dark. Sehun took this as a distraction to push the gawking pirate away and escape outside. Looking backwards, he saw the darkness escape from the room and slowly creep towards him, consuming everything in absolute pitch black. Even the bright torches stood no chance.  
  
Sehun couldn’t outrun the oncoming waves of darkness, so stopping after he could no longer see where he was going, he realized that even though he was out in the open, vulnerable to the pirates, the darkness would conceal him.  
  
Briefly he wondered what had gone wrong with the ship.  
  
Not so briefly he wondered if Jongdae was still safe.  
  
“I can’t see you, but I can still _hear_ you,” came a hostile voice that had echoed throughout the hallway.  
  
More shots rang out, and feeling like his heart had somehow beat its way into his throat, Sehun took off again, using his hands to feel the walls so he wouldn’t stumble into anything as he fought to _breathe_.  
  
Please…  
  
_Please_.  
  
Please just this once could he be shown the way?  
  
And, as if feeling Sehun’s desperation, the ship granted his request on time as the engine’s clock struck three.  
  
Sehun stopped as he listened to time’s musical introduction and then took off, running with his hands and fingers feeling the way, his ears straining to listen to the last echoes of the clock, his heart open and reaching out to Jongdae.  
  
BOOM.  
  
One stroke.  
  
Sehun ran faster.  
  
BOOM.  
  
The second.  
  
Sehun closed his eyes, listening to hear where the sound was coming from, and turned right.  
  
BOOM.  
  
The last.  
  
Sehun ran with his heart open, his heart beating for Jongdae, for life, for himself, and suddenly after the last echoes of the clock ran short, he found himself standing in front of that door and the glowing room that shined so brightly despite the darkness around him. Without a further thought, Sehun burst open through the door, shoulders sagging with relief as no pirates greeted him inside.  
  
“Sehun!” Jongdae said by the furnace, “Is everything okay? What took you so long?”  
  
“Pirates,” Sehun said, making his way over to Jongdae, but pausing to catch his stuttering breath, leaning on the wall next to the clock, “Pirates, Jongdae…The automatons….were sent by these pirates to spy on us before they attacked. They’ve got the rest tied up on deck, and they want the painting…and if they don’t find it they’re going to kill—“  
  
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Jongdae said, feeling the urge to run towards Sehun to comfort him, but the chain he was in the process of carefully forging restrained him, “We’ll figure out a plan. I’m glad you’re safe, Sehun.”  
  
“Yeah? Yeah…same to you,” Sehun hysterically said, relieved Jongdae hadn’t been harmed, but buried his hands in his face as he recalled the danger he had just run from.  
  
At this point, Sehun wasn’t sure if the moisture he wiped from his face was from his sweat or his tears.  
  
“Your neck,” Jongdae frowned as he spotted blood dripping down Sehun’s neck and staining his white shirt.  
  
Or blood.  
  
“Oh. This?” Sehun said, shaking fingers pressing against the wound he forgot, “It’s—“  
  
“They hurt you,” Jongdae said, his gaze darkening.  
  
“No, it’s really fine…it’s nothing. If anything, it’s my fault I accidentally cut myself on the sword trying to escape, but Jongdae you know the hole in this ship oh my _god_ guess what ha—“  
  
“Sehun. They hurt you,” Jongdae repeated, his fingers tightening around the tools he was using to forge the chains.  
  
“As long as you’re okay, I’ll be fine,” Sehun said. Next to him, the ticks of the clock continued to beat regularly.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongdae said, his expression softening from across the room, “When we have time, I’ll—“  
  
But suddenly the golden door slammed open, pirates swarming inside.  
  
“Don’t even bother hiding behind the clock. Like I _said_ , your time is up,” one pirate said as he strode over to Sehun and twisted the minute hand of the clock cruelly, forcing it to move forwards, forwards to a minute or two before four o’clock.  
  
“Kill him slowly,” came another voice as another pirate headed straight for Jongdae.  
  
“Watches, you’re back?” Sehun glumly murmured. What luck.  
  
Watches was back alright, but at what cost…Severe burns dotted his skin, and his eyes were shining with a desire for brutal vengeance.  
  
“Shut the _fuck_ up…You fucking tricked me and landed me with this,” the pirate yelled, “I’ll cut you up even more when I’m through killing your friend here.”  
  
“So you’re the one that hurt Sehun?” Jongdae asked calmly, glancing at the pirate’s sword. Beside Sehun, the clock began ticking faster and faster, obviously broken after the pirate forced it to speed ahead to a false time.  
  
“Are you _kidding_ me? Look at my fucking _face_! He’ll pay for what he did,” The pirate growled, pointing at his burned face.  
  
“It was ugly before the bubbles messed it up,” Sehun spat while eyeing the other pirate who cornered him into the clock. But he could not pay attention to the pirate for long, as a different, heartbreakingly magnificent sight distracted him.  
  
“Jongdae,” Sehun called, his eyes wide, “Your _shirt_.”  
  
Jongdae blinked and looked down at his shirt, feeling his breath getting caught up in his throat as he saw something shining so brilliantly it shone right through his clothes.  
  
His stopwatch.  
  
“Hey…Back to me. Where’s the painting,” Watches snapped his fingers rapidly in Jongdae’s face, the rapid movements causing the collection of watches to sway back and forth on his belt.  
  
One watch was dangling from a worn leather strap.  
  
One watch was made from crystal and gilded gold.  
  
And one watch was not glowing.  
  
Without a further word, Jongdae reached under his shirt with trembling fingers to pull out his own watch. His glowing stopwatch.Jongdae took several deep breaths before closing his fingers onto his watch and struggled to stay calm, stay calm, stay calm…  
  
Jongdeok was probably somewhere down below them now.  
  
Somewhere close.  
  
There was nothing he could’ve done to save Jongdeok then, and Jongdae had come to terms with that now.  
  
But here was Sehun now.  
  
Sweet. Stunning. Sehun.  
  
Scared Sehun.  
  
Sehun who was currently backed up into the corner with a gun pointed at his face with a bleeding neck and a burning heart on display for everyone to see.  
  
Sehun who should have more time to live than Jongdeok had.  
  
Sehun who Jongdae was going to keep safe through any means necessary.  
  
Sehun who was watching the tense situation unfold before his eyes, who noticed Jongdae’s determined gaze, who noticed the clock about to strike four, and who noticed that this was the time for them to do something.  
  
And as the broken clock struck four, the booms of the hour chiming simultaneously with a discordant melody, Sehun and Jongdae leapt into action.  
  
Sehun broke time’s wings, ripping the golden wings from the clock and stabbing it straight into the pirate’s stomach at the same time Jongdae let go and broke the chains he forged himself in order to grab the pirate’s head and slam it into the fire of the furnace. Singed flesh and screaming were both jarring smells and sounds, but Jongdae didn’t take the time to look back, opting to run across the room, grab Sehun’s hand before fleeing as the two pirates screamed from the pain inflicted upon them.  
  
The darkness of the underground labyrinth had not yet melted away, so Jongdae held out the strong light of his watch to guide them as he easily lead Sehun in and out of the corridors until they reached the top deck. Bending down and crouching at the top of the stairs, the two of them peered at the scene in front of them.  
  
But Sehun took the time to glance at Jongdae’s watch that was shining even more brightly than before and worried about Jongdae…worrying about all the hurt he must be feeling now.  
  
Jongdeok’s body must have landed somewhere around here for the watch to be glowing up this brightly.  
  
Briefly, Jongdae wondered if the watch still worked.  
  
Briefly, Jongdae wondered if there was a chance Jongdeok was still alive somewhere, miraculously alive from the fall.  
  
Not so briefly, Jongdae wondered how they were going to survive the pirates ahead.  
  
“What’s the plan,” Sehun breathlessly asked, crouching near Jongdae as he glanced ahead. All three of the others seemed to be doing fine. Alive. Unharmed. But Luhan seemed to be sporting a fresh bruise on his cheek that Sehun didn’t like one bit. Not. One. Bit.  
  
“Well. We have no weapons, so that’s nice,” Jongdae said, wishing he would’ve remembered to steal the pistol or even the sword from the pirates, but all he could think about in that moment was Sehun when he grabbed him and ran out of the room. Sehun was about to add he had a pocketknife, but what good was that.  
  
“There’s two of us and one of the captain,” Jongdae continued, relieved to see that none of the automatons Sehun had mentioned earlier were there.  
  
“So realistically, we should be okay, right?” Sehun said optimistically. He survived all those pirates with various weapons. Multiple times. So this…this should be fine, right?  
  
“Who’s holding the gun, Sehun?” Jongdae shook his head, “I wouldn’t want you to get shot, and we don’t know how many more pirates are still onboard their own ship.”  
  
The pirates’ ship loomed ominously above them, casting a shadow across the deck.  
  
But Sehun was impatient to see the sun again…to make the pirate ship’s shadow disappear so they could see only bright days ahead.  
  
And so he acted.  
  
“Knock him out for me when you see the opportunity,” Sehun said, leaping out of the stairs, waving aside the steam as he greeted the captain pleasantly.  
  
“What’s up, fuckface? All your pirates have been incapacitated, so it looks like it’s just you and me,” Sehun said, spreading his arms in greeting as he obnoxiously sauntered over the pirate who turned to meet him.  
  
“Do you have…a death wish?” the captain said slowly, cocking his pistol in Sehun’s direction.  
  
“No, but do you? I’d appreciate it if you could let my friends go unharmed,” Sehun said, covertly dropping his pocketknife in front of the three of them. Subtly, Jongin picked it up and began sawing at Luhan’s bonds as best as he could given his own restrictions.  
  
“Then give up the painting. It’s worth a lot, you know, and it’d be easier if you’d just hand it over so we won’t have to search through your ship,” the pirate said before Sehun began rambling about things other than the painting to waste time.  
  
Back at the top of the stairs, Jongdae shook his head at Sehun’s antics, slyly crouching and preparing to move steadily outside until a shot rang out and echoed through the open air that made his heart stop.  
  
“Damn. Would you look at that…You actually did it,” Sehun said as he fell to his knees, trying to not let a scream rip out of his throat as the captain’s bullet tore through his shoulder.  
  
“Do I need to ask you again? I can start shooting your friends here. Or finish you off,” the captain said, moving his pistol to Sehun’s head.  
  
But a violent echo of a _no_ reverberated into the air, and Jongdae was sprinting to Sehun’s side, startling the captain who moved his pistol back at them.  
  
“Jongdae, that wasn’t the plan,” Sehun hissed, clutching his shoulder, the blood blossoming brilliantly as it stained his white shirt. Now both of them were in the captain’s line of shot. And the captain wasn’t knocked out. Great.  
  
“Press it tightly, Sehun. You’re going to be fine…you’re going to be fine…you’re going to live. Okay? Don’t worry,” Jongdae said, his arms pressing down onto Sehun’s wound as he consoled him.  
  
“This is very touching and all, but where is my painting,” the captain said, sweeping his arm into the air to reveal a string of watches dangling from his belt that caught their attention.  
  
One watch had golden circular patterns engraved into the lens.  
  
One watch had red jewels encrusted into its surface.  
  
And one watch was glowing.  
  
Wordlessly, Jongdae reached back under his shirt with bloodstained fingers and pulled out his own watch again. This time, his watch and the watch hanging off the captain’s belt shone so brilliantly that he had to look away. His watch hadn’t shined this brightly since a year ago. Since Jongdeok.  
  
“Where. Did you _get_. That _watch_ ,” Jongdae said through gritted teeth.  
  
With realization, the captain looked at both glowing watches and let out a booming laugh.  
  
“Oh, this old thing?” The captain said, lifting up the watch from his belt to dangle tauntingly in Jongdae’s face, “I ripped it off of that military guy I stabbed before I threw him off his own ship a while back.”  
  
Jongdae closed his eyes and struggled to stay calm, stay calm, stay calm…  
  
Jongdeok hadn’t fallen off his ship in an accident after following Jongdae up in the sky.  
  
Jongdeok had been murdered. Stabbed. Ripped away from Jongdae and pushed out of time’s grasp.  
  
Jongdae had tolerated a lot of things in this one year that had passed. He had tolerated not being able to show up for Jongdeok’s own funeral in the city below because of his commitment to this ship. What was the point in going if there was no body to bury anyways? He had tolerated not visiting his family this whole time, unable to face his parents who lost a son, unable to face his grandma who lost a grandson, and unable to face the sky that lost a star. What was the point in seeing them if Jongdeok wasn’t there and if everyone would be in miserable mourning the whole time? And he had tolerated himself, letting the guilt and regret pull him away from the life he could have lived. What was the point in relaxing if any of his mistakes could cost his friends their lives?  
  
But this?  
  
Having Sehun shot by the same person who killed Jongdeok?  
  
Seeing both watches light up like this?  
  
That was it.  
  
That was absolutely it.  
  
With a heartbroken scream, Jongdae launched himself up at the pirate, never mind that the man had a gun in his hand, never mind that he could be shot and thrown off the ship just like Jongdeok, never mind that he could die any second.  
  
In the struggle, the captain’s pistol scattered near Sehun, who shakily picked it up and attempted to aim it at the captain, but Jongdae was constantly wrestling him, so it would be impossible for Sehun to feel okay shooting a gun when Jongdae was in the way.  
  
Also he was sure his shot was fucking awful.  
  
But pirates burst out of the lower deck followed by tottering automatons, looking at the scene before rushing towards them.  
  
Sehun aimed the pistol at them and another shot rang out, this time caused by him.  
  
A pirate with a sword fell to his knees, clutching at his shot stomach.  
  
Nice.  
  
Sehun hadn’t been necessarily aiming right at him there in the first place, but…nice.  
  
But another pirate was reloading his gun and already aiming at Sehun before he had time to react, and Sehun was scrambling to shoot, to do something before a blur streaked past him and quickly knocked the gun from the pirate’s hand.  
  
_Luhan_.  
  
Jongin was almost done freeing Yifan, who was aching to launch himself in the fight and beat the pirates who thought it’d be a good idea to mess with his crew.  
  
Relieved, Sehun tried to stand and head for Jongdae, who was still brawling with the captain, before someone kicked him and sent him stumbling down, the pistol falling from his hands and scattering to Yifan’s feet. Convenient.  
  
“You’ll _pay_ for what you did,” a voice said as a very unpleasant smell wafted in the air.  
  
“Fuck! You got _uglier_ ,” Sehun gaped as he looked at his assailant, horrified at the ghastly sight in front of him.  
  
Sehun didn’t know how Watches hadn’t been incapacitated already, but there he was with half his face full of angry pink burns that the bubbles had caused and the other side full of fire-singed flesh. Apparently Watches was very offended because Sehun’s remark earned him a scream and a kick to the stomach.  
  
“I’ll kill your friend after I kill you for doing this to my face,” he screamed.  
  
And that was it.  
  
On a good day, Sehun could tolerate one pirate coming after him with death threats, ill wishes, and some punches here and there.  
  
Two or three on an extra good day.  
  
But this was not a good day, and Sehun’s patience had been worn thin.  
  
No one was going to hurt his friends.  
  
No one was going to hurt Jongdae.  
  
He didn’t have anyone to care about down below when he was still stuck in the city, as he could only worry about himself, worry about eating enough for the day, worry about working hard enough so he wouldn’t be yelled at or beaten for the day. But up here, he had reasons to fight for someone other than himself, and his heart was beating, burning bright as he raised his fist and punched Watches right across his burnt cheek.  
  
Across the deck, reinforcements had arrived…dropped in from the sky from ropes and ladders from the pirates’ ship, but they were luckily confronted by Jongin and Yifan who had managed to finally free themselves in time. So, while Sehun struggled with knocking out Watches and suffering some blows himself, the others were fighting, shooting, yelling, and the air soon became filled with gun powder, steam, and screams.  
  
Sehun finally managed to ignore the pain in his shoulder to knock Watches down, and close by, Luhan threw him a pistol with an urgent _here_!  
  
Oh fuck a gun…  
  
Sehun didn’t think he could shoot someone again. Or worse…kill someone, so he tried to turn around the gun to knock him out with the bottom of it.  
  
_Tried_.  
  
But he accidentally set it off and almost shot his own self…but not before Watches got hit instead.  
  
Whoops.  
  
Sehun didn’t want to take time to ask if he was okay, so he quickly stood and launched himself at the nearest pirate who was about to slice Jongin…and down everyone went again, fighting for something, their friends, their lives.  
  
Deep inside the engine room, the broken clock continued to boom out the time, the endless, immortal time combined with the cacophony of the dissonant music. The booms echoed throughout the ship like cannonball fire.  
  
Across the deck, Jongdae was fighting, arms out, eyes blazing, sustaining a cut on his cheek, but still throwing out fists and yells as his rage and pain drove him onwards. He had managed to land some hard blows on the captain, but the coward was pulling back, pushing Jongdae to the deck before sprinting to the ropes to escape back to the safety of his own ship.  
  
Though the threat seemed contained and the danger seemed manageable, in his rage, Jongdae blindly followed the captain up the ship, grabbing onto the ropes and easily hoisting himself up as he continued to climb further and further up the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET'S GO IT'S TIME

 

 

 

 

  
  
After somehow managing to incapacitate an automaton before it could strangle Jongin, Sehun relaxed momentarily when no one else rushed at him. He took the time to catch his breath as he observed the scene, and he didn’t want to jinx anything, but the situation seemed manageable. Luhan was disposing of some pirates, Yifan was busy tying another one to the mast, and Jongin was deactivating the final automatons. They would win, it seemed. It would be okay, he hoped.  
  
But when he raised his gaze above the horizon, Sehun felt his breath catch in his throat as he saw the captain quickly retreating back to his ship, reaching his own deck…shortly followed by an angry Jongdae furiously pulling himself higher and higher into the clouds and into looming ship. By the time Jongdae reached the deck, the two immediately resumed their fighting. But they were fighting dangerously, punching and kicking each other so close to the railings that every time Jongdae suffered a hit, Sehun was afraid he would fall out of the sky.  
  
So even with his bleeding arm, Sehun took off running for the ropes and hoped he had enough adrenaline in order to begin to climb.  
  
If he managed to climb on and accidentally let go, then it’d be…unfortunate.  
  
If he managed to climb on at all with this arm of his.  
  
These arms of his.  
  
Well. At least he’d get to see what type of muscles all that shoveling gave him.  
  
So with his heart racing, Sehun ignored the pain in his arm, grabbed the rope with both hands, and began to climb up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET'S GO IT'S

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
Below deck, Luhan was throwing the last pirate off of him, realizing that they could win this. They could escape. Running towards Yifan, he wrenched the other pirates off of him and shot another one trying to attack.  
  
So now what.  
  
He couldn’t find Jongdae and Sehun, but he hoped they were fine.  
  
Now what?  
  
They needed a plan.  
  
Their ship was still stuck in the nets of the pirate ship above them, and if they could just cut enough of the ropes, they could free themselves and flee as quickly as possible.  
  
But the heights…  
  
But everyone’s safety.  
  
“Can you handle yourself?” Luhan asked Yifan as he pressed an extra pistol into Yifan’s hands.  
  
“Of course,” Yifan nodded as he nonchalantly shot a nearby pirate who was rushing towards them with a snarl.  
  
“If I make it back and find you’ve been shot, I’ll drag you back to your grandma myself,” Luhan said.  
  
“Make it back?” Yifan confusedly asked.  
  
“When I give you the signal, fly out of here as fast as you can,” Luhan said, hopping onto the railing of the ship while grabbing onto the net to balance himself.  
  
“Luhan what are you _doing_? Get down from there,” Yifan said, clasping at his chest in horror.  
  
“I don’t have a choice,” Luhan gave him a grim smile, “It’s death or death.”  
  
The sky or the pirates.  
  
Death or death.  
  
“No, let me cut the ropes! _You_ fly us out of here,” Yifan said, reaching his arm out to pull Luhan back down.  
  
Luhan was really tempted to let Yifan take his place, contemplating the offer as he focused on Yifan’s face so he wouldn’t look behind him and see the heights. Of course he didn’t fucking want to face his fears like this. He felt sick…light-headed… _scared_.  
  
But Yifan was to be the king one day.  
  
“I don’t have a choice,” Luhan said, shouting through the wind, “Your clumsy self will fall straight through immediately. And what if you cut your hand instead of the ropes? Let me do it.”  
  
But that was a lie.  
  
All Luhan would have to do was continue to stabilize himself by holding onto the net, cut it, jump towards the next part of the rope to hold onto, and then repeat the process until enough of the ship was free enough to escape.  
  
The ground, the heights, the sky were always going to be there, but Luhan had to make sure these ropes weren’t.  
  
So flashing Yifan one last smile, Luhan nimbly grabbed the net in front of him and began to saw away at it.  
  
There was always a choice, and this was Luhan’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET'S GO

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
On the deck of the pirate ship, time began to blur for Jongdae as he continued fighting Jongdeok’s murderer.  
  
Maybe it was from the adrenaline that pounded through his veins, the pain that Jongdae was trying to ignore, or the heartbreak that was still so overwhelming…but Jongdae blinked. And suddenly Jongdeok was here.  
  
There Jongdeok was.  
  
There Jongdeok was, his body crumpled, defeated temporarily by the captain’s strength.  
  
There Jongdeok was. Alive?  
  
And suddenly there Jongdae was back on that ship with Jongdeok a year ago, fighting with him, protecting him, doing all the things he wished he could have done to save him from this pirate, these skies, that fate.  
  
“Your brother was an easy _kill_ ,” the captain taunted.  
  
No he wasn’t. He was right here. He wasn’t dead.  
  
“Are you going to kill me? Do what he never could?” the captain asked, pulling out a dagger. Perhaps it was the same one that stabbed Jongdeok.  
  
“Jongdae,” Jongdeok pleaded, his dark hair as messy as Jongdae remembered, his voice as loud and clear as Jongdae remembered, his whole self as loved as Jongdae remembered, “Save me.”  
  
“I will,” Jongdae promised.  
  
Here was Jongdae, knocking the captain’s dagger away so Jongdeok wouldn’t be stabbed.  
  
Here was Jongdae, punching the captain with everything he had so he wouldn’t have had the chance to kill Jongdeok.  
  
Here was Jongdae, ripping away Jongdeok’s stopwatch from the captain who was so undeserving of wearing Jongdeok’s stolen watch like it was his own.  
  
“I knew you’d come. I knew you’d be here. My brother. My Jongdae,” Jongdeok said, picking himself up from the floor.  
  
_My fault?_  Jongdae desperately thought.  
  
“My choice,” Jongdeok hummed, clutching his stomach…his bleeding, stabbed stomach.  
  
Was he too late? He couldn’t change time, could he?  
  
“Stay with me?” Jongdae said, feeling tears run down his cheeks.  
  
“I’m here with you always,” Jongdeok said, smiling a smile brighter than all the stars combined.  
  
Here Jongdae was now, slamming the captain’s head onto the railing before swiftly bending down to pick up the fallen pistol and holding the captain in his angry grasp again.  
  
His chest was heaving up and down rapidly from the overwhelming emotions he felt in the moment, and there was nothing left to do now but raise the pistol to the captain’s head.  
  
“Jongdae,” Jongdeok called again. This time he stood next to Jongdae and smiled sadly as he wiped away Jongdae’s tears.  
  
“Jongdae,” Jongdeok called. This time he sat on the railing and nodded slowly, his feet dangling dangerously from the edge.  
  
“Jongdae, _wait_!” A different voice called out.  
  
Jongdae blinked. And Jongdeok was gone.

Jongdae stood right now, right here, letting his tears continue to fall as he turned to look at the source of the voice.  
  
“Sehun, you can’t _be_ here,” Jongdae yelled, gesturing for Sehun to go back, go away, to just _go_ before anything worse happened.  
  
Sehun paused to take a breath, collapsing on the same railing beside them for support. Jongdae had clearly won…beaten the captain in a physical fight, as he was grabbing the captain’s collar and pressing a pistol to his head.  
  
Oh.  
  
“Jongdae, what are you going to do now?” Sehun asked.  
  
“What does it look like I want to do?” Jongdae said, gritting his teeth as he pressed the pistol deeper into the captain’s head.  
  
“He’s too much of a _coward_ to do it…Just like his brother. He had the chance to kill me, too, but he _didn’t_. And look where that got him,” the captain laughed.  
  
“Shut _up_ ,” Jongdae screamed, releasing the pistol from the captain’s head in order to fire warning shots next to his head.  
  
“Don’t stop me, Sehun,” Jongdae shook his head, “I have to –“  
  
“I’m not going to stop you from doing what you want, but just… _think_ about it first. It’s your choice. You can’t take it back,” Sehun said, raising his hands before gently placing them onto Jongdae’s own shoulders until he relaxed and lowered the pistol briefly to think.  
  
There was always a choice.  
  
There was always a choice, and Jongdae thought about Jongdeok, thought about all the times he willingly blamed himself, blamed time, blamed the skies for killing him…and then he thought of how the person responsible for his death was right here. It’d be so easy to kill him…to push the captain off the same way he had pushed Jongdeok off.  
  
Jongdae wasn’t sure if he’d later feel regret, but right now, devastating pain and fiery anger was coursing through his heart…Brilliant rage crackled through his mind, and Jongdae was ready to choose.  
  
But when a startled yelp interrupted his thoughts and caused him to look up, the choice had already been made for him.  
  
Because when he looked up, the captain had taken the chance to grab Sehun and press them both dangerously against the railing.  
  
“If you shoot me, I’ll pull him down with me off the railing,” the captain warned, desperately wrapping his arms around Sehun.  
  
“Jongdae!” Sehun called, his hands futilely trying to pull the captain off of him.  
  
No…Not again.  
  
“I trust you,” Sehun took a deep breath, realizing what their options were as he ceased his resistance, “You can do this. And there’s always a net below to catch me. I’ll be fine. Pull me out if you have to. I’ll be _fine_.”  
  
Without giving Jongdae any time to think, Sehun quickly jerked his body away from the captain, bending down to give Jongdae a clear headshot. Jongdae fired the gun, missing the captain’s head from everyone’s movement, but managing to shoot his jaw. But the captain, true to his word, pulled Sehun with him as he teetered and fell off the railing.  
  
And feeling his heart completely stop, Jongdae paused for a split second…before he leapt into action.  
  
Jongdae prayed, struggling to breathe, struggling to be okay as he ran to the railing where the two of them tumbled down.  
  
He hoped to see Sehun.  
  
Startled. Sehun.  
  
Startled but alive…alive at the bottom of the net where Jongdae could easily jump into and pull out.  
  
And the captain?  
  
Well.  
  
He hoped to see him dead.  
  
Except when Jongdae peered over the edge, he wanted to jump over the railing for a whole different reason. There the captain hung, suspended in the air and strangled by the hooks and tangled ropes that caught his fall. His eyes were bulging out of his increasingly red, bloody face, and there he was…choking…going…going…gone.  
  
But Jongdae had no time to think about the captain. Beyond, clouds had parted to reveal a shining horizon ahead, mocking Jongdae with a sight he could not share with Sehun right now.  
  
No clouds. Just sky.  
  
No Sehun. Just net.  
  
And suddenly Jongdae was a year younger all over again, grasping at his stopwatch after reading that letter the military sent him informing him of what had happened. Suddenly Jongdae was back in that golden room, too afraid to move, to breathe, to live. Suddenly this was Jongdeok all again. Except while he saw now that he could have done nothing to save Jongdeok, here Jongdae was a year later…standing over the side of an airship and gazing at the hole in the net that would have saved Sehun.  
  
Sehun who slipped right through the net.  
  
Sehun who slipped right through Jongdae’s grasp.  
  
Sehun who slipped right out of time, falling for Jongdae didn’t know how long, but he hoped he was still falling.  
  
Because that would mean he was still alive.  
  
Please don’t let him hit the ground.  
  
Please give him more time.  
  
With tears spilling out of his eyes, Jongdae screamed, doing the best he could to hop down the ropes down the same hole Sehun fell through that would guide him back down to his own ship where he hoped he could find Sehun…safe and sound.  
  
Please not again.  
  
Please not Sehun…  
  
Not Stunning Stowaway Sehun.  
  
Not.  
  
Dead. Sehun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET'S

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
Luhan was feeling very much alive as he still cut the ropes. There was a certain rush of terrifying pleasure that he experienced every time he almost lost his balance or every time he decided to look down.  
  
Whoops he could have died there.  
  
Whoops.  
  
But luckily, he was still here, still alive, and no longer did he have to endure this. Looking back at his progress, all the torn net and ripped ropes, this…was good progress.  
  
This should be enough.  
  
“Fly us out of here, Yifan,” Luhan yelled, giving the signal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

HURRY UP NOW

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Sehun was falling.  
  
On the ship, he fell a lot of times…fell down the stairs occasionally in his haste to reach the engine room, fell into a new group of friends he’d do anything for, fell for Jongdae himself. And now this. Falling.  
  
Falling, falling, falling…out of the sky.  
  
Sehun couldn’t figure out if he was screaming or if that was just the sound the wind made when it scrambled to catch Sehun with arms it did not have, arms that Sehun continued falling straight through.  
  
Was this how Jongdeok felt if he had been alive and conscious enough to experience falling?  
  
Did he feel this scared?  
  
Did he feel this alive?  
  
At least he made it this far, right?  
  
At least he managed to escape that ashy city, right?  
  
At least he met Jongdae, right?  
  
It was such a pity that Sehun only had such a short time with Jongdae. He would have liked to spend so many more years with him…years and years and eternities and forevers by Jongdae’s side.  
  
But maybe this.  
  
This.  
  
Could this be it?  
  
The end?  
  
Would he get to meet his parents? See the things he missed but gained with time? That booming chuckle, those rosy cheeks, all that lov—  
  
But he hit something before he could finish thinking, breathing, loving.  
  
_Living_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

HURRY UP

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Yifan counted his crew before he would agree to Luhan’s command.  
  
There were only five of them including himself, so he didn’t understand why it took him such a long time.  
  
_One_.  
  
Himself. He was here. Alive. Okay.  
  
_Two_.  
  
Luhan. He was here. Alive. Okay.  
  
Probably terrified…but at least alive.  
  
_Three_.  
  
Jongin. He was there resting against the mast and gripping a broken arm.  
  
Injured. But alive. Okay.  
  
_Four_.  
  
Jongdae. There he was scrambling down from the pirate ship’s ladder just in time. Why he was looking frantically over the railing and screaming, Yifan wasn’t sure, but Jongdae managed to calm himself down after he wildly searched everywhere and finally stumbled across the deck and looked under the purple sail of the ship that billowed, rippled through the air peacefully.  
  
_Five_.  
  
Sehun.  
  
They were all there, so that was it. Yifan spun the wheel and flew them away, leaving the pirate ship suspended in the air, flying out of the dark shadow and into the light.  
  
They were alive. How about that.  
  
He and Luhan had managed to sustain any major injuries.  
  
Jongin had some injuries, but he was alive.  
  
Jongdae had been sprinting and climbing around wildly so Yifan thought he was surely okay and uninjured enough to be able to do that.  
  
And Sehun?  
  
Well. Yifan didn’t know what he was doing up in the sky like that, but luckily the giant purple sail of this ship had been there to reach out and catch him, safely breaking his fall.  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Jongdae had realized it was useless to look over the ship’s railing for Sehun. If he had fallen, there was no way he could see him now.  
  
So, praying on all his stars, Jongdae turned away from the railings and searched the deck, hoping for a miracle, hoping for the best luck, hoping for –  
  
Sehun.  
  
Sehun who was lying under the purple sail with his eyes closed, blood still pouring out of his bullet wound.  
  
Jongdae held his breath as he approached, hoping that Sehun wasn’t hurt badly, that Sehun was okay, that Sehun was _alive_.  
  
“Jongdae,” Sehun softly called, blinking open his eyes to see someone peering above him, “The hole in the ship is broken.”  
  
“Hold on, Sehun…You’re going to be okay,” Jongdae breathed, bending down to press Sehun’s shoulder to slow the bleeding. And here Jongdae was feeling so relieved he was crying again.  
  
“Jongdae, why are you crying? The stars are beautiful,” Sehun said, gazing at Jongdae’s smiling, tear-streaked face while the sun, the afternoon sun shined upon the ruins of what had happened.  
  
“The stars are so beautiful,” he repeated before passing the fuck out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

HURRY UP NOW LET'S GO

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
Through the haze of pain and sleep, Sehun finally dreamt peaceful, dreamless dreams.  
  
But when he awoke, he woke in a bed that was not his own.  
  
“We’re at a hospital, Sehun. A mountain hospital,” Jongdae’s voice pulled him out of his grogginess slowly, “Do you…remember what happened?”  
  
Sehun blinked once.  
  
Twice.  
  
Three times.  
  
After he could clearly focus on the beautiful sight of Jongdae sitting perched on the edge of his bed, holding his hand, and looking at him with such a concerned gaze did the memories rush back…the memories of all the fear, all the fights, all the falling.  
  
“We’re alive?” Sehun breathed.  
  
Jongdae nodded, silently smiling as he reached over to brush Sehun’s hair from his face. He didn’t know what was wrong with the ship he tended to daily, but he did know what was right. Its sail caught Sehun. It saved Sehun.  
  
Sehun closed his eyes as he leaned into Jongdae’s touch, but then opened them wide as he remembered.  
  
“I’m sorry about Jongdeok,” Sehun said as he noticed the bright glow that shone through Jongdae’s shirt.  
  
“Thank you, Sehun,” Jongdae nodded.  
  
And that was it.  
  
Jongdeok was gone…long gone…had been gone for a year, and it was not Jongdae’s fault. Jongdeok had wanted to follow him into the skies, and that was not Jongdae’s fault. He saw that now. It was tragic Jongdeok did not have more time to fly, to smile, to love, but that was life. That was time, always rushing people to hurry, hurry, hurry to the future, to the end whether they wanted to or not.  
  
But Sehun was here.  
  
Sehun was right here right now in front of him…alive and staring at Jongdae like he was the most beautiful being in the whole galaxy.  
  
“I want you to have this,” Jongdae said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a glowing watch.  
  
“Jongdae, I _can’t_! It’s—” Sehun began to say, reaching out his uninjured hand to stop Jongdae.  
  
“Yours. It’s yours now,” Jongdae said, pressing it into Sehun’s hand and folding his fingers over it, “Jongdeok…would’ve loved you, too, I think.”  
  
“Thank you, Jongdae,” Sehun solemnly said, and awkwardly, with one arm, he slid the shining watch over his neck and down his shirt. The light shone brilliantly like his heart was on fire…burning for Jongdae, only Jongdae.  
  
“Are you feeling better?” Jongdae asked, “Luhan and Jongin are restocking the medical supplies in the inventory room, and Yifan’s playing with the children here. When you’re feeling better I can show you around the hospital.”  
  
Sehun rested there for a bit until he insisted he was fine and until Jongdae gently guided him from the bed and showed him around the hospital. Kids with clockwork prosthetics giggled as they rushed past them, Yifan straight on their heels laughing as he ran after them. Later Sehun would learn Jongdae had made those mechanical prosthetics himself. Of course he did. Jongdae was so amazing.  
  
When it was finally time to go, time to fly off to another hospital, fly off into the sky, fly off to who knows where, Sehun realized he could never return down below. He would never return to the ashy city because when he had all this freedom, beautiful freedom as the wind tousled his hair, his friends on board beside him, and Jongdae right here smiling and laughing so sweetly, there was no way he could give it up until time itself left him…going, golden, gone.  
  
Here was Jongdae now, smiling as he looked over the railing, but this time instead of looking down below, he looked straight ahead. This time, Jongdae turned to ask Sehun a question.  
  
“What are you looking at?” Jongdae asked, curious to what Sehun could possibly be looking at with such a wild, affectionate gaze.  
  
Sehun continued gazing at Jongdae before he couldn’t take any more of the burning, brilliant, beautiful emotions rising through his chest that made his heart ache with such devastating fondness. So he expelled such overwhelming emotions by kissing all the fucking starlights out of Jongdae right then and there.  
  
And after he finally ceased to take a breath, holding Jongdae so close he could hear his heart beat more wildly and wonderfully than any clock had ever ticked, he answered.  
  
“A star…the most beautiful, boldest, brightest star I have ever seen and loved in my life,” Sehun fondly smiled as the ship lurched forward and flew higher and higher into the sky beyond.  
  
His star.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HURRY UP NOW LET'S GO! IT'S LIFE!


End file.
